Sea World for Christmas

We love visiting Sea World during Christmastime. Its quite magical, and it gives me the Disney-esque feeling of everything is good in the world, and we are lucky to be alive. Sappy, yes. This year, we went with Carl's family.

I love that the kids are now old and tall enough to go on rides by themselves, and with their younger cousins.

No more getting splashed in the winter on Atlantis for me!

And I loved watching Carl take this picture of his mom and the boys possibly about to get soaked.

Except he got soaked the most of all. ;-)

We had a chance to meet Baby Shamu, who was about a week old when we saw him.

And we experienced the beauty of Sea World at Christmas.

The highlight of our day, though, was dinner with Santa and Mrs. Claus.

Santa read 'The Night Before Christmas' to all the boys and girls.

And then all the kids had a chance to visit with him and share their wish lists.

This may be our last year for Santa. He gave a noticeable gulp when Alex went to sit in his lap.

Loved this photobombing elf. ;-)

A lovely December day was had by all.

Busy, Busy Jack

Our Elf on the Shelf, Jack, was back and busy once again this year.

He started things off by raiding Ryan's piggy bank.

Carl helped me several nights - it was usually easy to figure out which nights he plotted...

And which nights I took responsibility.

Jack even gave the boys a few clues about our upcoming snow trip.

Not that the boys picked up on it, however.

Most days Jack kept in pretty simple.

And he spent a lot of time in the kitchen this year.

But mostly, Jack helped remind the younger members of our household that its important to stay on Santa's nice list.

Christmas in Austin

As usual, we spent Christmas at home. My mom flew out to California to be with my brother and his family. We went to our own church for Christmas Eve services, although no matter how much I tried to bribe Ryan, only Alex dressed up as a Shepard this year.

After services, we came home,  watched one Christmas movie, read the Night Before Christmas, and tracked Santa on NORAD. This years movie was... ugh... Santa Clause 2. Which oddly starred Juliet from LOST, so color me slightly happy.

Santa arrived early the next morning (notice its still dark outside behind them).

We had a great Christmas morning at home.

Perhaps we spoiled them a bit.

Oh well.

Life kind of sucked for us in 2013. We lost my grandmother, Carl's dad, and Carl's cousin. So we all need a bit of spoiling, if I do say so.

Which is how we led to the boys' big Christmas gift, a skiing trip which we would leave the very next day for. (note to self in future: last minute trips the day after Christmas - one hell of a bitch to plan and execute). Mom gave the boys their snow boots, snow pants, and ski lessons, as a present.

Santa also delivered two electric scooters for the boys.

With a note that they still needed to charge a bit, because apparently Santa doesn't quite have things as together as you might think.

The day got even better when we went to Grandma's house for even more presents and Christmas dinner.

(The picture quality also changes here because we left our good camera at home, and made do with my phone camera for the rest of the pictures.)

I also experimented with all the photo editing apps I'm always downloading and rarely using while we opened a million presents.

How perfect was little Matthew, reaching for the ornament on the tree? As Ryan says, he's just so cute you just want to squeeeeeezzzzzee him.

The boys favorite gifts of the day, though, were their tablets from Grandma.

The three oldest grandsons received tablets, and they couldn't have been more thrilled.

We also had plenty of time to go outside and everyone tried out the boys' new scooters, now fully charged, and which work fabulous on the flat streets of Grandma's house.

And then we were done, ready to go home, unpack our van full of goodies, and quickly repack for our early morning departure for Santa Fe. Merry Christmas!