Christmas Events

In front of the train

All bundled up

Ready for Christmas morning

Avery with her cousins on Christmas Eve.

Just my Cheese ball

So hard to get a good one of the girls together.

Stocking opening...the dog looks thrilled

Christmas morning

Kinley so excited about her new Elmo...which btw my husband got for 12.99 and it is supposed to be 59.99....score to him! Plus, they LOVE it.

Kinley with her great-grandparents

My favorite..she was surprised

Opening her "big" present...7 princess dolls

Her favorite thing...Minnie from Aunt Ness. She still says it is her favorite toy

Another exciting moment, brushes for her new dolls

The first few pictures are from the Christmas train in Simi this year. It has been a few years since we have been, and yes, it was still the same. I do like the pictures though. Poor Kinley was so tired and fell asleep for most of it.

So we started off our Christmas celebrating with our annual celebration with the Schmidt side of the family at Wes' Aunt Heidi's house on the 22nd. Wes' brother was in town so all of the siblings were together this year. Avery always has a great time celebrating with her cousins and had her first taste of opening presents. The next celebration we had was at Wes' grandparents house. We alternate between his family and mine every year and this was his year. His grandparents are so sweet and soooo generous with Christmas. Each kid gets a gift as well as the adults. We then went home and Avery got her Christmas Eve orniment (Minnie ears) and new Hello Kitty slippers for the next day. We then went to bed and woke up to a cranky toddler. I mean she was so crabby. She demanded to have her butterfly net which was in her stocking. So after some attitude changing, and Kinley waking up, we got to open stockings. Avery got all kinds of goodies and is still having fun playing with them. Then on to the presents! We have a three present rule from us. We figure our kids already get enough things for Christmas and the last things they need are MORE things. We try really hard to make sure our kids understand the true meaning of Christmas and also appreciate every gift they get. We then went to Wes' sisters for dinner. I took some pics, but not many of them came out and I forgot to include them, so Oh well. Mostly Avery just danced with her cousins and Kinley crawled around. I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas, I know we did.

Two firsts

In front of the Staples Center

In awe

So in December Avery got to do two things she has never done before. The first was gymnastics! This was really exciting for me since I grew up doing it. Her friend had his birthday party at the gymnastics place and she had a blast. She is still asking me to go back. I am hoping this is a better year financially for us, and that will be a possibility. My only concern was she didn't listen to the teacher very well, my stubborn kid! I just have these visions of her sitting out in time out half of the class. I sure hope not. Anyways, she looked so cute so here are a couple of pictures.

The next things she did was take a friend to Toy Story 3 on Ice. We didn't tell her where she was going. We just told her she got to bring a friend and we were going somewhere special. We ended up taking her friend Noah, for a couple of reasons. He is easy going (We knew he wouldn't cry for his mom), and it was his fourth birthday the next day. So that afternoon before nap she told me her tummy hurt. Then all of a sudden, puke! I was so bummed. All I could think of was, we were so looking forward to this special surprise and a few hours before she got sick!! Well, I told her to take a nap and see how she felt. She woke up much better and never threw up again. I think she may have just eaten something bad. Anyways, back to the experience, she and Noah had a blast. They were just in awe of the Staples Center itself. When we got into the show they each got to pick out a special cup that they put a snow cone in. Avery picked Jessie and of course Noah picked Woodie. The whole show they just watched in awe and ate their treats. Such a fun experience and we were grateful to Wes' work for giving us the tickets.