Christmas Morning

Ahh, bright and early on Christmas morning. Claire opening her first present. Of course it was the one that Lindsey gave her. She sure worships her older sister.
This was Dad's Myspace photo of Stone and himself. Stone looks thrilled.
This is the quilt I made for Little Richard to take back to school with him. I put Richard's symbol in the center, along with the inscription,"RT3" That is how Little Richard refers to himself. Richard received many practical school gifts this year.
Well, I guess pigs do fly, Hell has frozen over, and Mom has lost all her marbles. Because I actually purchased a video game for my kids. I decided that this is not a regular video game. It is a fun interactive family game that everyone can enjoy. Not to mention the fact that Dad has always wanted a family band, but could never induce any of his kids to take up the guitar or drums. Now he can have his band. They have been on it for over 2 hours now.
Aiden received a super sonic Nerf gun from Little Richard. He enjoys shooting it at the person who is messing up the most in the Band Hero game. And he has to shoot while simultaneously making loud noises. Aiden just likes any excuse to make loud noises. He's a boy.
Here is a photo of the carnage that is left of our livingroom. I have even done a little cleaning up before this picture was taken. And now it has all moved into the familyroom.
Claire has put on as much of her new clothing as possible. She desperately wanted yellow jeans. and her sister got her the Hello Kitty shirt and necklace. And Santa got her the snazzy cowgirl boots. And she has on her new yellow watch. Although she struggles to tell time on an analog watch. Thanks to digital clocks everywhere. We need to teach her that.

I will post more tomorrow with pictures of our Christmas evening activities.
MERRY CHRISTMAS !!!

Christmas Eve

During the day of Christmas Eve Claire and I made sugar cookies, and gingerbread man cookies. Dad is the only one who will eat the gingerbread cookies though. Claire is wearing her special Christmas apron that she made.
Aiden saw young Richard using my chopper thingy and freaked out. "Slap Chop!" He loves the Slap Chop infomercial guy. So he confiscated Claire's apron, made a label for the chopper, and posed for the camera.
While we were baking, a friend of mine called and informed me that he had 1000 lbs of cheese at his house that he was trying to get rid of. Aiden is always asking me to buy him block cheese. I like to buy the pre-shredded cheese that he doesn't like. So now as you can imagine, he is in hog heaven with his 42 lb block of sharp cheddar cheese. Now we have to figure out a way to cut it into 1 lb chunks. A project for another day.
In the evening we had our traditional food fest. We invited Grandma and Grandpa Hoopes down to partake. We planned to eat, and watch "A Christmas Story". Several of my kids had never seen that classic movie before.
Here is a close up of the feast. Notice the crab, shrimp, cheese fondue, and papoosas. At one point I noticed that Claire had the ring of shrimp just sitting on her lap enjoying herself. I made her put it back on the table.

After eating, but before the movie we had to play the annual Christmas bingo game. The rule is, if you get bingo you get to open one present that night.

The festivities ended around 10 pm. Little Richard invited all the kids to sleep down in the basement in his room so that they could watch videos and play on computer all night instead of sleeping. Then Richard and I began the arduous task of wrapping. We got to bed around midnight. Only to have our children come running in our room at exactly 6 am. Richard noticed something as each child entered the room and was silhouetted by the hall light. Our kids are really big. None of them are small anymore. Not even Claire Bear.

More Sewing Projects

Claire had her friend over again, and this time they made Christmas aprons. They wore them to the Ward Christmas party that night. Claire immediately removed hers, but Brianna kept it on the whole night.
Claire would like their next sewing project to be a quilt. She has made them once before with another friend. That is an all day project though. Her friend is very anxious to try out the Big Sewing machine.

Crab Feed At Grandma's

Grandma Wright invited the kids over to her house for an All You Can Eat crab feed. The grocery store had them on a good sale, so she bought one whole crab for each child.

Here is a photo of the feast.

This was the dessert. It is hard to tell, but this is an ice cream cake.

Another photo of the festivities.