Christmas and New Years fun!

I will be the first one to admit that I overdid it for Christmas this year.  I started shopping after the Summer, and I love to hunt for good deals.  To me, the fun of Christmas is getting the things my boys want - for a fraction of retail price.   I spoiled the boys, and next year I will have to try to tone it down a little bit.  Even though the boys had way too many gifts, it was so much fun. We had a nice, simple, relaxing Christmas.  Just like last year, we also had a white Christmas.  We woke up to a winter wonderland.   Its so magical having Christmas with snow on the ground.  The older boys woke up first, so they got to play with their Santa gifts for a little while.  Once Blake woke up, he was grumpy, and didn't want anything to do with his gifts.  He only wanted Chase's Santa gift!  Finally he calmed down, and had fun opening up his wrapped presents. We didn't have anywhere to go, so we just spent all morning opening gifts and enjoying our cozy, snowy Christmas.  Jason gave me a new DSLR camera.  I was really excited!  My older rebel has been an amazing beginning camera, but it was starting to have a hard time focusing, and my pictures were not coming out as crisp as I like. I will still keep it for the boys to use when they get older, or just as a backup camera to take places I don't want to take my nice one too.  I took the morning Christmas pics with my old camera, and I used my new one the rest of the time.  See if you can spot the difference.

 A few days later, we headed down to California to celebrate the holidays with family.  We stopped in Las Vegas on the way down, and the boys got to enjoy the Volcano (amazing), and the fountains.  The next morning we went to Calico, since there was a flash flood on our last trip.  We had sooo much fun, we ended up staying hours later than we had planed.  We got to California a little bit later than we had hoped, but it was worth it being able to spend time at the Ghost Town. We then had Christmas with my family, and the next day we had Christmas with Jason's family. We stayed in a nice Residence Inn, which had amazing breakfasts that my dad also enjoyed with me.  It was a really, really fast trip, but it was fun and I'm glad we were able to go.

Santa gifts
Wesley : Gold mining kit, science books, and some other science items plus stocking stuff
Blake: Shopping cart with some food plus stocking stuff
Chase: remote control crane, real digger, and stocking stuff

Christmas morning 

We took advantage of the snow-less ground, and Wesley had fun riding his new present all over the hotel grounds 

We always have fun with Aunt Jennifer for New Years.  New Years eve we went to John's Incredible Pizza, and had a good time before heading over to her house for the New Years party.  Jennifer always puts together a cute party for the kids.  She fills balloons with money, and puts them on the Christmas tree, along with New Years decorations (noise makers, poppers, hats, beads, and so on...).  The kids take turn picking, and popping the balloons, and they get to keep what ever money is inside. She also has champagne cups with apple cider for the kids to toast with, and we do the count down at nine so everyone can stay awake.  Jason took the kids outside, and they all had a silly string fight, and they also goto to use poppers.  Jennifer was even nice enough to let them use confetti poppers inside the house after the countdown.  The kids love it - and I love it.  These are the memories they are going to treasure forever.