Merry Christmas Day!

Hello all! I just have to tell you about our wonderful Christmas Eve evening. After a great dinner of ham and funeral potatoes etc, we did the dishes. OK I did the dishes along with Mike. Our dishwasher is finally fixed! After clean up was complete, we went out for our traditional "lookin at the lights". I love that people are so kind at Christmas and decorate the outside of their homes for the enjoyment of others. We went up to the neighborhood in Kennewick that was the Christmas Songs neighborhood. On many, many houses in that area they have a board painted to look like a piano sheet of music and on it is a song. Then they decorate their yards accordingly. For example - I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus had Marge and Homer Simpson kissing. There were many others. It was so fun. Then we went to Canyon Lakes and saw some houses up there. Beautiful. But I think the greatest light show was down on the street of Deschutes. There is a landscaping/sprinkler business there that decorates all their trees and their buildings with lights. Not only do they decorate, but if you are by their building and put your radio to 101.7 they have Christmas music and their lights go to the beats of the Christmas music. That was really a great finish to our evening. Then it was morning.

Merry Christmas to all! And to all a good afternoon nap. I know I need one and it's only 9:45 am! After staying up late to help Santa, Mykie was in at 5:30 am asking us to get up. Um, NO! Remember we said 6:00 am? Appearently, she did remember, but since she couldn't go back to sleep, we needed to get up. When you are tired and looking forward to 30 more minutes of sleep - you can get a little snappy. See you at 6:00, Mykie.

When we did get up, Santa's gifts were ready to be opened. It was so fun. All the kids enjoyed their gifts. Brigam asked Santa for a guitar. I tried that with Tyler one year. He was excited for about 10 minutes and then the guitar went into the yard sale. So this is what Brigam got instead:

He tried it once, so the interest in guitars was just as I expected for him, but Tyler, Jeremy and Mykie have been enjoying it this morning. I even tried my hand at it. I'm not very good, but I intend to get better.

One of my favorite gifts was this one bought by Tyler when we drew family names:

It's called a Cocoa Latte machine and it makes your hot cocoa for you, keeps it hot, and frothy! The cocoa is delishious. The kids say it is the best cocoa they have ever tasted!

Now for our "Badger Mountain Bazaar Gift" for Mike and I. We've been wanting one for a long time. So I finally put the money from the bazaar towards it and this is what we got:

Yea! And it's such a pretty red too. I wanted lime green or pink, but Mike nixed that right away. This is the color we agreed on. He's already playing on it. We are so excited to have our own computer that the kids are only allowed to look at - not touch. We say that because only a week ago I paid $107 to get viruses taken off one computer. Then I still had to buy a new wireless router.

Well, Brigam is filming everyone with his new camera and I think I have to check the footage to make sure that I am in the best light.

Everyone enjoy the time they have with their family today!