Christmas 2012

Yes, I'm a little late in posting about our Christmas here. I have to say that this was the first year we stopped in the middle to have some breakfast and it wasn't because there was so much to unwrap.

I really try every year to not overdo it with the gifts. There is always a book, something I think they really want, a clothes item (something they really don't want, except maybe Kiersten), and a few other things. I try to limit the gifts to around 6 or 7 per kid. I just don't want any of them to feel like someone got more than they did, and quite frequently I hold on to gifts to give at birthdays.

Every year I stand back and look at the tree after "Santa" has made his arrival and feel like I've overdone it. Tyler has to always tell me that it's not really that bad; we just have a lot of people in our family.

Anyway, the reason the unwrapping took so long was because of this:

The math tags were slightly more trickier than last year and took more cooperation and Nate's new handy calculator. They all worked together to solve them and then we all usually waited while that person unwrapped their gift. I am loving the math equations. I think we only had one mishap where I forgot an equal sign and there was no way to solve it. Luckily I had them all written down on a separate piece of paper.

Some of our favorite's this year:

New basketball shoes

A binder of all the songs she frequently plays on the piano  

Fitbit - a cool little gadget that tracks how many steps I've taken for the day. I guess it's more like a glorified pedometer. But I love looking at it to see how active (or inactive) I've been throughout the day.

Matching clothes - love our sports teams

Heated blanket - and just in time for the frigid air that's hit our area

Soccer ball

Bulgogi

And last . . . a white Christmas. It's been a long time since we had one of those.

(photo below courtesy of my father in law; you can kind of see the snow out the windows)