Merry Christmas!!!

We had a great Christmas! On Christmas morning, my parents came over to exchange gifts. After we were done opening presents, my mom and I started making cinnamon rolls (a family tradition going on 30 years or more!) While we were waiting for the cinnamon roll dough to rise, we went out to lunch. Afterwards, we came home to roll out the dough and add the cinnamon sugar. I actually didn't get to do as much of the work as I had hoped because I was on the hunt for some more pans at the store while my mom was home with the kids. She said they had fun sprinkling on the cinnamon sugar, though.



The kids loved their gifts from Grandma and Grandpa B. They both got VERY nice things, but I have to say Ally's favorite was her baby doll that talks. It's called Little Mommy Real Loving Baby Doll. It's really cute. Ally named her Callie and she responds to her name when you say it. It's adorable. Tommy loved everything, but he was really excited about his Diego Toys. He had a lot of fun with his John Deere Barn, too!



After church on Christmas Eve, we went to Matt's parents' house where we had dinner with his parents, brother, sister-in-law, and our nephews and niece. We had a great time. The kids had a blast with their cousins and were so excited to open presents.

Katie (our niece) is always happy to take a picture for me. I hope she never grows out of that. :)
Ally got this Storytime Theater from Grandma and Grandpa. It's a projector that shines a story on the wall. She loves it. It's really neat. You can turn it on and let it play the story and it will shut itself off when it's over. So we've let Ally 'read' a story before bed when she's been good. Tommy loves it, too. It came with a Dora story, but we have since bought Lady & the Tramp and Nemo.
Picture of Tommy opening the Tinkertoys Grandma and Grandpa got him. He loves them!! He has been spending lots of time building things around the house!



It's very rare for me to get pictures of the boys. They are at the age where they are not happy with picture taking, so I tried to respect that and didn't get many pictures of them this year. I snapped this while they weren't paying attention. :)
They are all playing Ring Around The Rosey. The kids have SO much fun w/ their cousins when they are in town. They just love them so much!!!

Christmas Morning the kids had SO much fun. We opened about 1/2 the presents and then ate our cinnamon rolls (a tradition every Christmas morning). They were SO yummy!! Then we opened the rest of the presents.

Christmas was SO great this year! We had a lot of fun with family as well as spending some of it at home. It's so nice not to feel rushed like we have in the past. I can tell the kids actually have time to enjoy it now. It used to be that we weren't even really home at all from the 23rd-26th. lol Just to sleep, that was pretty much it. So this year and last were great!! Matt and I decided to get each other small gifts from the kids this year b/c we just bought a new flat screen tv. It was our big expense of the year (probably of the decade!! lol) We bought a Samsung 40" LCD flat screen. We love it. We just recently had the HD hooked up and it's amazing. Matt still needs to put the wires behind the wall, but we just haven't had a spare second.
We also ended up finally going to digital cable which meant upgrading our tivos. So we ended up getting two dual tuner tivos. We just knew we couldn't afford to spend much else on presents after all that. So we each helped the kids buy something. Ally got me a One Touch can opener (it's awesome. i love not having the electric one on the counter - it clutters it too much!) and Tommy got me an angled measuring cup. This is something I asked for last year, so I was glad to get it. Most of you know that I really like to cook, so I really liked these gifts. And for Matt, Ally got him a Blue's hockey tshirt and Tommy got him a Blue's hockey hat.
This gift was from Ally to Tommy. It's the cars Change-Up. he loved it and as soon as he opened it he told ally thank you and that he loved it. Then he gave her a kiss. It was really cute. Tommy's present to Ally was a wooden lace-up set. I couldn't find any pictures of it.

Tucker loved playing with the wrapping paper and tearing it to shreds.... This was the only calm moment he had all morning! lol

On Christmas night, we went to my Grandparents where we spent time with Grandparents, cousins, aunts, uncles, 2nd cousins, etc. We had a great time. We played Cranium and just had a nice time chatting w/ everyone.