Merry Christmas!

On Christmas eve night, we fell asleep in the car on the way home from our great-grandparents house, and were upset in the morning when we realized that we forgot to leave cookies and milk for Santa… Good thing he felt comfortable enough to help himself!

…and we’re glad he got the energy he needed from our cookies, because he was BUSY at Nannie’s house!

Our stockings were FULL of goodies… dolls, candy, hairbows & games galore! He knew just what we like!

 

 

Abby was VERY excited that Santa brought her the Barbie doll she asked for!

… and he remembered to bring Emily her doll with a horse! Santa ROCKS!!!

Ben even helped open his own Santa presents!

Nannie was very excited to open the bowls that we all painted at a pottery place for her to have at her house when we come!

Ben had a good time hanging out with grandpa…

… and got the coolest construction silverware in his stocking!

One of the hits this year was matching bean bag chairs for us from Nannie & Grandpa… We LOVE them!

 

 

They make for a perfect reading nook in our room!

It took Emily a while, but she managed to get through opening all her gifts… she just wanted to stop and play with everything!

Our Santa’s Little helper had a great time!

Mommy tried time and time again, and there was just NO getting good group shots this Christmas…

Even Emily tried to get a few shots with her new camera! She likes being just like mommy!

Aunt Bridget was a trooper, even at 37 weeks pregnant! We can’t wait to celebrate Christmas next year with baby Liam!

We were very happy celebrating Ben’s first Christmas this year all together!

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

Christmas Eve celebration

This year, we celebrated our family Christmas on Christmas Eve morning, since we were going to be away on Christmas. The night before, mommy & daddy set up all our presents, so we had a big surprise when we came down in the morning! We had so much fun, and once again, we were more excited to give the presents to everyone that we had picked out, than opening our own. In fact, we insisted that mommy got to open the first present, because we were so excited to see her open up her jewelry box! Mommy & Daddy were so proud of us, and said they hope we will always have such wonderful Christmas spirit!

-Abby, Emily & Ben

Daddy gave us each our own very special engraved jewelry boxes! Emily must have REALLY loved it, because as soon as she opened the box (which didn’t even have a picture on it), she yelled, “I LOVE IT”!!!!

 

We’ve had so much fun filling them up with all of our jewelry!

Mommy gave us each ornaments… Abby got Rapunzel, and Emily got “Relli”!

Emily couldn’t wait to get hers on the tree!

Ben was surprisingly good at opening presents! Who knew a 4 month old could help so much?!?!?

Daddy was so excited for him to open up his very first train that he will add onto each year!

 

I think Ben was pretty excited too

Emily loves her very own Tag reader… especially since she can now read princess books all by herself!

We all loved Ben’s special Binky that Emily gave him…

Grandpa Hawk & Grandma Nancy bought us an AWESOME dollhouse, and we were SO excited to put it together…

… we had to wait until after Christmas, but it was worth the wait! We love it!

Ben loved his tool belt that Abby picked out completely on her own…

As always, there was lots of Christmas spirit, as we did great sharing all of our stuff with each other…

… and were very generous with the “thank you’s” and hugs!

Here’s a video of our morning together!

On Christmas Eve night, we got all dressed up and headed out to Long Island to celebrate with Grandpa’s family… of course, not without trying to get a family picture with mommy’s new camera. We were NOT into that idea, as you can tell!

Unfortunately, Dancey-Dancey couldn’t be with us this Christmas since she wasn’t feeling well, but we had a good time with Pop-Pop and playing with all the young cousins! Our family sure is growing!

We even got to meet Daddy’s cousin’s baby, who was born only 4 days after Ben!

Our mom’s and dad’s tried REALLY hard to get a good picture of the great-grandkids together, but as you can imagine, it didn’t work out so well…

Can you guess who came to see us on Christmas Eve?!?!?! SANTA!!!!!! And he even brought us some presents!!!!

Emily LOVED her princess doll from Dancey-Dancey & Pop-Pop…

 

… and Ben loved his build-a-bear fireman!

Before leaving to get a good night’s sleep before Christmas morning, we got to have some of mommy’s homemade cookies for dessert! The melting snowman cookies were out favorite!

 

This was all mommy was wishing for on Christmas Eve…

… and she got her wish