merry christmas!

and our advent adventures come to a close with gifts and time spent with family! it was quite a late night but we did make it and are so glad we're here. the weather is unbelievably warm and sunny...and just as it got nice and rainy back in seattle ;). perfect timing!

we started with breakfast for kiah and then stockings and presents before naptime rolled around. perhaps the highlight of the morning was discovering "weinerbucks" ($5 gift certificates to weinerschnitzel) in our stockings when linnie found 5 in-n-out gift cards! whaaat?! my dad decided to play a little prank and couldn't keep the smirk off his face when lins kept pulling out gift card after gift card and the rest of us were like, "what the heck?! i don't want weinerbucks!". even better was the fact that he planned it and pulled it off by himself...and even told my mom "this is great - i'll get all the weinerbucks back!" which he totally did. we all had a good laugh about it :)

the weinerbuck incident of 2011

kiah wasn't too excited about his new clothes (even though mommy was) but he did love his new trains! growing up we played with brio trains all the time, even though technically they were my brother's toy. our set grew over the years and may have gotten passed on to my younger cousins, but i think they found their way back to my mom's. now kiah has a starter set all his own...a special farm train version picked out by papa ron :). the tracks are the same but the train got upgraded - battery power! it's pretty cool; kiah mostly just chews on the pieces and destroys any track you create but eventually he'll figure it out!

kiah starting to figure out the paper

trains!!

think i may have to use that for kiah ;)

mom modeling the scarf i made her

some gift highlights...we got my mom a new sewing machine (hers was ancient!) which she was pretty excited about...dad got a new kindle fire and i got him (and kenton) hooked on angry birds which i found hilarious...a ridiculous amount of home depot gift cards for eric...lots of pretty things for me & linnie...and lins getting my brother back by putting a bag of lemons in his present (by getting back i am referring to the year he put potatoes in a huge box to trick her).

kenton's lemons - hahaha

dad & bud strategizing over angry birds

we spent the rest of the day lounging, sitting by the pool and eating! it was a very nice, relaxing day spent with family...finished off with a fantastic meal, good wine and laughing so hard my stomach hurt. all of my favorite things!

pool time!!

christmas-y seesters :)

highlight of kiah AND papa's day :)