Christmas Vacation

So this is a ton of pictures. But we had a BLAST...well, I think Chloe and I did anyway. We started a cool tradition with Chad's parents where Santa sends toys (McDonalds toys) to a special christmas mailbox. Chloe loved it and begged every day to go out to the mailbox, often even after we already had. Three times, we went to Jumping Jellybeans (or jellybabeans as Chloe calls it.) That's the inflatable play place. It was an absolute blast, especially when we went with all of my sibings' families. My dad even took a quick run down one of the slides!! He also changed a diaper!! (But I didn't get proof of that one, my sister did.) AMAZING! We made and decorated cookies and went to the World of Coca-Cola. That was pretty stressful for a number of reasons, but I had fun, and I think most of the kids did too. Chloe's favorite thing there was the big polar bear that we took pictures with. She was fascinated by him. He gave her five; it was really cute. My favorite thing there was the 4-D movie. Chloe wouldn't wear the 3D glasses though and had to sit in my lap along with Everett. Everett wasn't thrilled with the water that squirted in his face either, but he didn't complain too loudly and I thought it was awesome! I think Chloe's favorite thing about the whole vacation was my mom's necklace, the string of mini-Christmas lights. She sat forever in mom's lap just looking and telling her "it's SO cute!!" She finally angled to get it from my mom, as you can tell from the progression of the pictures. She traded an old necklace that we'd made together; I'm sure you've all seen it. It's in all of the other pictures.

Favorite gifts and new toys:
Everett: the basset hound

super soft airplane blanket (my favorite)

Chloe: the kitchen (so sad we had to leave it at grandma's!)

clean up toys - broom, vaccum, mop, sponges, etc.

She's enjoying ALL of her new toys which is amazing because she got a TON. I honestly think we doubled what she had before. Not very cool, but amazingly enough, she's playing with all of them. It's fun to spoil her sometimes.

Me: digital photo frame (very excited to get it set up)

Joanne's gift card (also very exciting)

Chad: ...gift card to his comic book store

No Christmas isn't and wasn't all about the gifts and toys. Ok, maybe a lot of it was because half of the fun is watching little ones get so excited about everything. Everything was so exciting for Chloe, and for me in turn. We also really had a lot of fun with our family. I'm enjoying just thinking back over it all.