Merry Christmas!

The holiday season has just begun to wind down for our family. We are currently in NY after a whirlwind of family gatherings during Christmas week. It was a great Christmas for everyone. It all began on Christmas Eve at Mark's grandparents house. The girls were each given sock monkey's that Velcro. Anything they can put around their neck is a huge hit with them.


Like everything we have two of, some one takes them both and runs away. It was Ruthie this time.

I find it ironic that she has two monkeys on her and I have two monkeys on me every day. If her monkeys were 20 lbs each I think she would appreciate all of my hard work. I will leave that guilt trip for her teen years though.

And, of course, despite all of the wonderful gifts she received, she wanted to play with paper. It is always the simple things in life for these guys.

Then came Christmas day! We got the girls 2 large items and then some smaller stocking items. They each seemed to be drawn to a different item, which worked out well.

Ruthie to the slide/playhouse....


and Maddie to the ghetto ball pit. Why ghetto, may you ask?


Because Santa assumed that when Target sends you a ball pit that they would include enough balls to at least cover the floor of the ball pit. Santa was wrong....very wrong. They still enjoyed themselves though.

Then the girls busted out their stockings, which really werent stockings. They were Hello Kitty bags from the $1 rack at Target. Very festive, I know. I was meaning to get matching stockings for our entire family, but due to budget reasons it did not happen. So, Merry Christmas, from Hello Kitty.

The phones and necklaces were a big hit, as were the Hello Kitty bags. Dont knock it until you try it.

Then we went off to Mark's parents house for the rest of the afternoon. The girls got these bounce and spin horses. Big hit!

Unfortunately not as big of a hit as the boxes that other presents came in.

Hope everyone has a great New Year from our family to yours!