Ho! Ho! Ho! Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas everyone! We had such a wonderful Christmas! We've been very busy with all of Boyd's family in town (as you can tell from my lack of blogging). It's been so much fun hanging out with everyone and getting ready for Christmas! Here is Eli in his Christmas shirt. It says "Dear Santa, I've been good all year! (ask my mommy)"

My little Elf!

Hi Daddy!

Sleepy little Elf doing some last minute shopping with Mommy and Daddy on Christmas Eve

Hangin out with Uncle Camo

This is Eli's Christmas jammies from Auntie Shirley. It is so cute with little Santa feet and a robe that says "Baby's First Christmas" he was so cute in it!!! Thanks Shirley!

Opening his first gift on Christmas Eve. Hmmmm I wonder what it is....

WOW! Jammies!!!!

With mommmy and Allie after opening jammies!

All the Grandkids in their Christmas jammies (Hailey was very tired!)

This is the "kids" tree. I bought a little 4' fake tree for the kids to decorate. It's really cute! They put all my old ornaments from when I was a kid. Then they strung popcorn for garland and made some decorations with pipe cleaners. It was so fun!!

Okay so this is Christmas Eve. Brooks put the kids to bed early so that Santa could come. Brooks and I were wrapping gifts in the living room and Aaron and Boyd were playing video games in the Family room. Allie decided that she REALLY needed Brooks (i.e. she wanted to come down and see the presents). But Brooks kept telling her to go to bed. Well at about midnight, I discovered her on the stairs--SOUND ASLEEP. She had crawled over the gate which we put at the top of the stairs so no one would sneak down and she must have just been laying here "spying" and then fallen asleep. We were DYING laughing! Oh Allie.....

Santa Came!!!!! Santa came and left all sorts of presents and stockings under the tree!!

Christmas morning! Eli's stocking is as big as he is!

So nap time hit durning gift opening. Eli just couldn't stay awake to open presents! So he took a little snoozer. (Notice Grandpa snoozing in the back) :)

Look at all the gifts Santa left in your stocking Eli! Santa put: bedtime lotion, Mylicon, socks, a rattle, sunglasses, and flip flops, in his stocking!

Grandpa Mark gave Eli his first Avalanche outfit! (now all he needs is a rockies outft and he's all ready to be a true Colorado fan!) The hat was a little too small.

What's goin on Daddy?

This is what Mommy and Daddy got Eli for Christmas. It's a little seat that he can sit in and hang out while strengthening his muscles and learning to sit up.

Eli watching Allie play her "puter" games.

The Zoo!

A week before Christmas, we took the kids to the zoo and we had so much fun! Eli slept the whole time (his daddy was happy about that!) and the older kids had a lot of fun enjoying the "shunshine" and seeing all the animals. We went at a perfect time because there wasn't very many people there, so we had a lot of room to roam around.

We saw so many animals, but this one was my favorite. I've never seen such a huge tortoise! He was so cool! He moved so incredibly slow, it was amazing! Tortoise's live to be over 100 years old!! That's CRAZY!

The zoo had a really cool terrian, it was a good workout! Here is a shot from one of the views. It's so cool because it's in downtown Phoenix, but it looks like you're in the desert!

Hannah and the Giraffe. There was this really cool lookout/hut thing that you could climb up and be right next to the Giraffe's.

Hailey and Allie. Hailey wore her sunglasses the whole time. She must be a "shunshine" girl :)

Gingers

I made homemade gingerbread and we built gingerbread houses. It was a lot of fun for the kids, and I was proud that I got it to work! :) Allie calls them "gingers"

Hike in the desert

The weekend before Christmas, the whole family had a picnic in the desert. It was really fun. We loved walking around while Grandpa told all the kids about desert life and told stories of when he was young.