Christmas Eve and Christmas Day

On Christmas Eve we had an elaborate dinner consisting of a rotisserie chicken from Wal-Mart, gravy, corn, and grapes. The girls wanted to start a tradition of eating it on the floor in front of the fire. How could we resist that?
After dinner they were dying to open a present so they each opened one. Our neighbor from church brought us over some home baked cookies.

Our tree on Christmas morning!

McKenna opening her presents....a new leotard!

Kelly with her new Leapster!

Camille loves her new Dora couch...can you tell?

For Christmas dinner we got together at our house with 2 families from our ward. The Youngs have 3 girls and the Lunts have 2 girls and one boy so there were 8 girls and 1 boy. They had a blast putting on shows and singing for us. We enjoyed a great meal of ham, potatoes, gravy, sweet potatoes, rolls, whipped jello, green bean casserole, and martinelli's.
To finish the night off we had chocolate cream peanut butter pie, key lime cheesecake, lemon bars, and apple pie. I was full!
It was nice to spend the evening with friends and family!

Floweritis

In Kelly's 1st grade class they are studying germs. For the last day before Christmas vacation, they had to come up with an "itis". This would be the reason they would be missing school for 2 weeks. They could choose whatever they wanted. Kelly chose Floweritis. We bought fake flowers and pinned them on her (it was also pajama day). We made a flower headband and used a flower ponytail holder. There are also a few flowers on her face but she said they hurt so she did not want more.
Her symptoms.....whenever she reads or writes, she sprouts 2 more flowers. When she hears the word flower, 4 more grow. She LOVES to read so soon she will be in trouble!
She was so excited for today, isn't she cute!

Hello Kitty Birthday Party

McKenna will turn 4 years old on the 20th. We thought it would be better to have her party earlier than later.
We started off by having a Hello Kitty coloring contest which was won by Brinley. Cory was the judge.

We then moved on to Pin the flower on the Hello Kitty picture!
They were all really close but Emalyn was the closest.

I think the pinata was the favorite. Each child took a turn hitting it, then Cory took it away for a few minutes. McKenna was up again and what do you know????? It broke on the second hit!!

She got great presents. She is into crafts, sweaters, and gumballs and she got some of each!

Hello Kitty cupcakes and ice cream cups ended the party!

Do you think she likes the frosting?
Happy Birthday McKenna!

McKenna's First Day of Gymnastics

We have told McKenna for about a year that she could start gymnastics when she turned 4. That is mainly because of the cost of 2 girls in gymnastics. Well, she will turn 4 in about 2 weeks. The session started on the 2nd so we decided to go ahead and let her start this time. She LOVED it and told us all about the bean bag crab walk, the balance beam and the cartwheel mats. This is her on her 1st day! She picked out her own leotard.

The Most Crooked Tree Ever!

Saturday we went to pick out our tree. We thought we got really lucky to find a cheaper tree ($50) right away that was super big and bushy. It was perfect! Well, something is terribly wrong with the trunk and for the past 2 days we have been trying to get it to stand up straight and just when we think we have it.....it starts to lean. I think we are going to anchor it to the wall. These pictures don't really do it justice and you can't really tell just how much it is leaning.

Saturday night we went with the Bulls to WildLights at the Columbus Zoo. It was freezing! We got there pretty early when it was not TOO crowded. When we left at 7:30 pm, there was a line of cars out of the parking lot a few miles down the road. Talk about beating the rush!!
Camille did not want to keep her mittens on so Cory used them as earmuffs. It was not a long visit but we had fun!