Christmas

Twas the night before Christmas....
and these two were very, very excited!

They put out Santa's cookies and oats for the reindeer.

After they were finally asleep, presents appeared under the tree
and Mom and Dad finally got some much needed sleep!

Several weeks ago, Randi saw a big stuffed horse at Costco and just had to have it. I told her to write Santa and tell him that's what she wanted for Christmas. So, as soon as we got home, she sat down and wrote this note....I had to help her spell the words, but she wrote it out by herself.

And guess what was under the tree when she woke up?

A tan pony!

She could hardly stand to get off him to open the rest of her presents, and when we took a mid-morning break to eat some breakfast, the pony (now named Buddy) had to come to the table with us!

It was so much fun to watch Ryan's joy as he opened each gift, the only problem was he couldn't find the crane that he'd asked Santa for and he was getting a little perturbed!

Just when he was about to have a total meltdown, Santa showed up to save the day!

He told Ryan he had to come back because he'd forgotten to leave a couple of gifts under the tree. First he had fun sticker calendars for each of the kids...

and then he pulled some big boxes out of his sack....

in one of them was a laptop Randi had circled in a toy catalogue

and the other thing was.....tada.....a crane!!!

Thank goodness! Now that's one happy boy!

I think Santa liked playing with the crane too!

Look, it hooks things!

Thank you Santa!!!

It's 1:00pm and Randi is still on her horse, practicing tricks and wearing her new Princess & the Frog nightie

Ryan and Gee played several songs together and amazingly enough, Ryan kept tune right along with her!

There are times when you just know you got the perfect gift and made a child's heart happy....when I walked in Randi's room and saw this sight, I knew this was one of those times!
(notice the bowl of apples for Buddy sitting next to him on the bed and the purple hair bow in his mane!)

Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas!