Christmas Magic

Christmas is absolutely magical when you have children who believe in Santa. When the girls woke up on Christmas morning they were giddy with excitement. When they saw that Santa had come every word that came out of their mouths was followed by an exclamation point! It was so fun to watch them discover the magic of Christmas morning.

The first big surprise was a pop up tent with a tunnel. They didn't waste any time crawling in to explore.

Then they dumped out their stockings and it's a good thing Santa put some apples in there because that was all we could get them to eat before they jumped into present opening.

Teya was thrilled with everything she got. Brinley was too but I think she liked Teya's stuff a little more. Good thing Teya is good at sharing.

My sister Naomi made this awesome plaque to hold our running medals. And I made Taber a running collage by scanning in all his bibs and putting them together with race pictures to make this cool running frame. Definitely made me excited about the prospect of getting back into running after baby gets here.

I also put together another Blog book for our family. It was interesting to see how my blogging habits have evolved. The first book I made covered 8 months and was 82 pages long. This book only covered 6 months but was 184 pages long! I'm glad I've preserved our memories and have a fun way to look back on our family history. Now I just need to make books to cover 2010!

After all the presents had been opened our living room looked like a bomb had exploded in there. It was pretty awesome. Here's a before and after shot.

The girls spent the morning playing with their presents.

They also spent plenty of time playing in the boxes, which makes me think next year we should buy less toys and just wrap a bunch of boxes!

I also got to use one of my new presents to make us waffles for breakfast! I LOVE my new waffle maker and seriously want to make waffles every morning now. : )

All in all it was a wonderful Christmas, even though it was our first ever without any extended family. I thought it would feel lonely but the girls made it special with all their excitement.

I'll leave you with a cute video of Teya's first reaction to Christmas morning. I just love how she is so excited about everything and literally follows every sentence with an exclamation!