Christmas Morning

 Christmas Morning!

The girls were pretty good this year, so Santa rewarded them with presents. What they wanted the most from Santa was "Bootsie" (Leah--a Fur Real Cat) and "Cuddles" (Juliet--a Fur Real Type dog). They were both SO EXCITED to get their major Santa gifts, but of course, have played with both those toys very sparsely over the past 2 weeks.

The big winners from Santa were Juliet's Glinda dress (Oh, how she loves Wicked. She would listen to it and act it out every day if she could), a genie costume for Leah, Leah's dress up scarf, and sticker by number type art projects for both kids. Leah must have gotten close to 30 new books between Santa and us, and has been a reading machine over break. Her favorite were the Magic Treehouse "Fact-checker" books which are like non-fiction chapter books that cover the same topics as the fiction series. 

 From us, Leah is obsessed with her socks and sleeping mask. Juliet was so angry that she didn't get a sleeping mask that we had to order her one on Amazon. Leah got 2 science kits -- crack open your own geodes and a digging for gold kit. She loved them both. Juliet likes her Ice Cream Truck (but not as much as I thought she would) and her new legos. Leah also likes her new Legos.

 The kids both always have wanted a train that went around the tree. So, that was also one of their presents. I ordered it from The Disney Store and they ended up sending a collection of dolls instead. We didn't open the package until December 22, so I sat on the phone for 45 minutes that night waiting to talk to a representative. They ended up overnighting the train, and we donated the dolls to Juliet's preschool. 

 Annual Christmas Morning picture!

 At first, Juliet couldn't see Cuddles and she was really, really worried. She was happy when she found her!

 Leah got Lea's jammies. Now she matches her doll!

 Genie

 Getting ready to crack open geodes. Poor Chris is pretty sure that he damaged his ears for life. 

 Juliet and a collection of Christmas gifts overflowing the table.

 Leah doing her sticker art.

 Last year we started the tradition of making cinnamon rolls Christmas morning. I couldn't find the same recipe we used last year, so I found another one. This one took 5x as long. Never again. It was way too time consuming. The kids didn't eat until 1 (they refused to have anything else). Next year I am googling the easiest cinnamon rolls possible.