Christmas Peer Pressure

After spending the last 12 hours or so looking through everyone's blogs and ooohing and aaaahing over all the Christmas pictures, I succumbed to the pressure and decided to post a few gems of my own.

Before I begin, I should mention that although they may look cute, the children in the following pictures have spent the day trying to convince me that they are devil spawn. So in case I don't sound like my usual doting parent, just remember...these kids are good at whatever they set their minds to, including parental torture.

This year we decided to lock the oldest two in their rooms for the entire week of Christmas (a.k.a. they were at the ex's houses), so we only had B and P. They were beyond excited about every gift, but I am only posting a few pics of their very favorites. Is anyone else always amazed that the presents the kids really love are the ones that you thought were so blase?

Little P loves to pour water on the floor while bathing. Santa, the jerk, decided to gift him this bath toy. Little P loves it, and so does the bathroom linoleum. It has never been cleaner.

Little P waited to walk until he was almost 18 months. But he excelled in other areas, like pooping, so we didn't really care. We got him shoes which he was beyond excited about and now he spends his days tromp, tromp, tromping around the house. Little B now calls him "Baby Robot."

I know it looks like we only bought our kids necessities, shoes...coats...food....but really these were what they were most excited about. Honestly, little B made a killing, but still his most favorite thing was this coat.

One of B's other favorite gifts was this block of gravel. Inside were dinosaur fossils waiting to be dug up and pieced together. He loved it, and I am still loving finding gravel fragments from the one hour expedition.
Christmas morning proved to be quite a learning experience for little P who promptly decided he now had the power to open anything he wanted.

Like a box of Q-tips.
And a box of Nerds candy.

On New Years Eve we got just enough snow to celebrate the holiday by throwing the kids down a hill-- I mean sledding. So we bundled P up in his new robot shoes and fancy hat from Grandma Laurie, and took him in the wind... 20 minutes before sunset... in -4 degrees. This was about 2 minutes into the sledding trip. SO happy.

Tromping proved too hard, so Vinny held him the rest of the time (all 6 or so minutes he lasted outside). Still so happy!

Since the older two kids were finally let out of their rooms (a.k.a. back from the ex's houses), we decided to capture one brief picture of all 4 of them. Not so happy.

Beautiful little K! I cannot describe how much harder my life is when she is gone. I know it is years away, but suddenly the idea of her leaving for college sounds like the worst time of my life.

"Brothers don't shake hands, brothers gotta hug!"

It was freeeeezing cold, windy, miserable(well, for me) and very late. In fact, I almost needed an infrared camera to get my pictures. But they sure had fun!

Now for the crem de la crop, my two proudest pictures from the holiday season:

1. My VT's gave me this beautiful ornament of the Bountiful Temple. I, however, was out of little ornament hangy things and was too lazy to track down any string. Enter the bread bag thingy. Voila!

2. Our Gonzo snowman. It's a beaut, I know. Too bad I didn't get a picture of it's droopy nose before the tip broke off. So ghetto.

See any resemblance?

Hope you all have a fantastic 2010!