Santa Visits Seal Beach

Ahhhh... finally! The computer is fixed and ready to get back to the blog! Sorry for the long delay. Trust me, I have been going crazy without a computer. Seriously, what did we ever do without these things in our lives?

Anyway, on to the long awaited pics from Christmas morning!

What a fun "late night" and "early morning."

Late Christmas Eve (well, late in 5 and 6 year old standards), Nonna and Grandpa were in charge of the bedtime story. Twas the Night Before Christmas is the traditional choice for the night always! After the story, the kids were tucked in and asleep in no time. They were beat.

After the kids were asleep, the work began! This year, Santa's helpers didn't have any kitchens or dollhouses to put together so it was a "cuss free" evening! Phewww.... the secret is to save the hard stuff for the years when Brother Jeff and Aunt Julie are staying with us...LOL! Julie really is the key... because she can put together anything. (I will also have to wait to set my clock in the kitchen until she returns to California sometime soon I hope!)

~~~

As you remember from an earlier post, the girls have determined that each family is assigned their own elf by Santa and they wrote letters to Santa asking about their elf. Well, guess what... Santa wrote back! Turns out, they were right and our personal family elf is named "Sprinkle."

So, the morning couldn't come fast enough for the girls...
We told them that when they woke up in the morning, if there were presents under their tree in their room, they could open them on their own before the grown ups woke up. We told them that they needed to wait until our early morning guests (Papa and Marzie) got here at 6:00 a.m. anyway before we'd let them go downstairs. Well, morning really felt like it came early as we heard there little giggly voices playing with the toys under their little tree in their room. I knew I went to bed late, but boy it didn't seem like I had slept enough... but as you must as a parent... we got up to get going on the morning event. Daddy, half asleep asked Ryan to come tell him what time it was before we rolled out of bed. "It's 2-4-7 Daddy." "What? 2:47! Get your *&%$^& back to bed!"
(So much for a "cuss free" night...LOL!)
To their defense, we DID tell them they could play with their toys when they got up. It's not their fault they can't tell time. We have since taught Ryan how to tell time.

Well, 3 hours later... we started all over. Looks like the girls got new slippers by their bed that they loved.

Very, very antsy.... and waiting for the video camera to start rolling.

Down they come to the tree and are very confused. No new presents.

"Oh, here's one. It doesn't have a tag. It MUST be from Santa!" exclaimed Charlie.

"Good thinking Charlie but those are for Mommy from Daddy that he didn't wrap until 5 minutes ago."

The girls were so confused and sad almost.

(P.S. Look at those Christmas jammies... I couldn't resist! I mean, really, how many more years would I be able to get jammies in this style? I had to go for it!)

"Oh, Santa tricked us Charlie! Look, he left our presents in here. He must have been too tired to carry all this stuff up to the tree. He has a lot of houses to visit!" Ryan confirmed.

Ahhh, the much anticipated... Pillow Pet!

Ryan's most excited to find out the answers to her questions from Santa.

The apple doesn't fall far!

Charlie got a new best friend... life sized Rapunzel.

She looks strangely real, huh Papa?

Lots of gifts for everyone made for a fun morning. The girls got a ton of fun gifts but I have to brag about the best gift I got! My mom created "Blog Books" for me since I started this blog in 2006! A separate book for each year that my mom made by herself. Priceless. My biggest fear has always been that I will have done all this work documenting our girls' lives for them to have as their "baby book" and then someday the blog website will disappear and all our memories would go with it to cyberspace. So, now... I have a hard copy of all these great memories to be stored somewhere safe to pass down to the girls someday!

One of our traditions is that the girls can pick out ANYTHING they want for me and Steve. Whatever they think we need. Charlie thought that her daddy needed Family Guy Santa Underwear! I laughed so hard!

Charlie's new bike was hit!

Ryan, our fashionista liked all her new clothes best.

She went up stairs, laid it all out, and put together the BEST looking outfit from all her new treasures!

THIS is what she came up with.

(Hmmm... we may need to do a little more work in the "fashionista" business...haha... gotta love her!)

We had to go outside and try out the bikes and razors!

There's that outfit again... ahhhh!

I love these girls.

Our Purple Princess got everything in her favorite hue... of course!

I wish I would have gotten pictures of our Christmas morning guests and fabulous breakfast made by my husband! I guess I was so caught up in the gifts and talking (and lack of sleep) that my camera skills got a little off track. But, needless to say, thank you everyone for coming to watch the girls and their loot from Santa. We loved having you here!