Christmas Morning

 Christmas morning was so fun this year!  Samuel really seemed to know that Santa brought him presents and was just filled with excitement!!

Santa had made arrangements for this trampoline a few weeks ago.  Samuel decided to ask him for bulldozers the Monday before Christmas.  Santa must have done some fast scrambling to find those cute bulldozers.

Santa also got Samuel his very first Hot Wheels!

Maddie got a new rope, too!

He really enjoyed opening his presents.

I tried to turn these pictures and somehow they keep turning sideways again, so turn your head to see the sheer joy of jumping on his new trampoline.

Casey got me a Kindle Fire.  I have really loved playing with it.  I've already finished 4 books just this week.  

Eating powdered donuts before we hit to road back to Prescott.

I know people think we're nuts for doing Christmas Eve in Prescott, coming back to LR for Christmas morning, and then going back down south for the rest of the Christmas day fun.  When I was little, I never got to experience the excitement of waking up to Santa in my own home.  I was so jealous of other friends and my cousins.  I really want Samuel to have that, so we do a lot of driving.  An hour and a half is really not that bad-it sometimes takes us that long driving around town.

And it is so worth it!

Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve is spent in Prescott with Casey's family.  

Samuel was dying to start opening presents.  

Paw Paw tried to distract him.

Tyler tried to distract him by having him pass out presents.

We finally gave up and let him start helping PawPaw.

Then he got to start on his own.

When we got home, we scattered the reindeer food in the yard.  I tried to use the nighttime setting on my new camera--bad idea.

Dirty Face/Long Lashes

Look at those long lashes and awesome blue eyes!

Baking Cookies for Santa

I think the title and the pictures tell the whole story.  :-)

I Can Do It!

Samuel insisted on putting his own pants back on.  

Notice the zipper in the back?

Pockets in the front?

These are his "workin" jeans, so there are holes in the knees.  He put one of his feet through there.  :)

Santa at the Mall-the rest of the story

We headed to the mall today to have Samuel's picture taken with Santa.  The website said he'd be there at 10am.  He wasn't.  He wasn't going to be there for another hour or so.  And that was as much detail as the girl could give us.  

I was pretty snarky to the poor girl working the camera about it.  

Samuel and I cruised the mall-which, by the way, I hate.  I only go for Santa visits in December.  I'm not a good shopper or even window shopper.  We found the fun firetruck and motorcycle down in the food court.  That killed about 20 minutes.  

Santa still wasn't there.  So we left the mall and headed to Kroger.  

We got back about 45 minutes later. Santa was there and there was a line.

Luckily, we we ended up in line by some friends from church.

Claudia was so sweet and Giles just never was sure what was happening. :-)

Then it was Samuel's turn.  He wasn't sure about Santa at first.  He just kept looking at him.

He finally loosened up and told Santa that he wanted a BIG bulldozer.

The official Santa shot.  

Santa Time!

We went to see Santa this morning.  There's more to this story and other photos, but I'm doing the CD picture from Casey's computer and will do more from my camera's card on my computer.  Stay tuned....

Samuel's Class Christmas Party

Last Friday was Samuel's last day before his holiday break.  They didn't do a real party, just a special Christmas snack-Christmas cookies, cheese puffs, and juice boxes.  

They always do super healthy snacks, so the puffs and cookies were a BIG treat.  

Samuel's sweet friend, August.

Benjamin and Micah.

Sadie.

Christian.

Talia.

Daniel, Jamari, and Cyan.

The kids were so sweet and just chatted and talked the whole time.  I LOVE listening to them talk to each other.  It tickles me.