Merry Christmas!

Christmas came and yes, Santa did make it all the way to Thailand! We got a kick out of watching him start his journey way up in Eastern Russia before any of you in the US were even celebrating Christmas Eve! Santa brought all kinds of good stuff for the kids (skateboard for Tim, electronic keyboard for all kids, lots of books, Webkinz, games, Monster Truck for Nate – all he wanted, etc.!) but most of it wasn’t in big packages so it just didn’t look as full under the tree as usual! Caroline noticed and commented on that to Rick, telling him that next year she is going to be sure to ask Santa for some big stuff so that it looks fuller under the tree. Rick suggested to her that maybe we should just get a smaller tree?!?!? That really cracked Caroline up! J She has a great sense of humor!

We kept our Christmas celebration pretty low key. Christmas Eve we just hung out all day, making lots of sugar cookies for Santa and cinnamon rolls for breakfast the next day. We headed to church at 7pm, then home and straight to bed so that Santa could come. Christmas morning started out EARLY! I mean really really early when Caroline came in our room at 2 am, hoping we’d get up but then just complaining that our hard wood floor was too cold to sleep on (isn’t that why she has her own cozy bed in her own room?!?!?!) We held the kids at bay until 4:50am, when they couldn’t stand it any longer and we had to go down and open all the great stuff under the tree! That was done by 5:50 am. Yawn!!!! The rest of the day was spent playing, eating, and yawning. We had our ham dinner early (at 1pm) so that after Nate’s nap, we could head out to the pool to meet some friends and neighbors and swim and eat Christmas cookies (that was dinner) until 8pm, when a) it was too dark to see the kids swimming and b) Rick and I couldn’t stay awake any longer!

Here’s some pictures of the big day!