Christmas Eve and Christmas Day

I guess I need to start catching up on some blogging since I still have not finished our Holiday Posts!  In my defense, we only just finished Christmas with all our family last weekend so I'm really only a little over a week behind.

We were here in Austin for the holiday which was nice and fairly relaxing.  On Christmas Eve, we didn't do a whole lot.  I had attempted to make sugar cookies with the kids once already this season and it was somewhat disastrous as I just did not do a good job with the dough. I was determined that we would try one more time and after much consultation with friends/co-workers, I finally thought I had enough information to give it a good try.  So, Christmas Eve morning, we gathered round the kitchen island to try again.  Lo and behold, the cookie angel smiled upon us and we had an awesome time.  The cookies turned out pretty great and we had fun. 

Preparing for rolling out the dough

Here was our setup - we just did them right on the granite counter tops

Close up of my lil' helper!

And my other helper! In case you can't tell, they both had flour all over but that's the point, right?

This is fun mom!

And the finished product... delicious!

After cookie baking, we had naps and then it was off to church which was PACKED.  We barely could all sit together but the kids were well behaved and the church beautiful.  After, I was able to snap a few pictures in front of the tree.

And this was the tree after Santa came!

We had a nice Christmas Eve because Baba and Casey came to spend the night at our house so we could all be together early on Christmas morning.  We had a full house with all of us plus 5 dogs!  On Christmas morning, the kids were so excited.  They really got into Christmas this year and Santa Claus and opening presents.  Here are just a few pictures of opening presents.  We had a very Merry Christmas as I hope all of you did.  A few more posts of our extended Christmas are coming so it's not over yet!

Caitlin's first gift...

A baby doll!

Evan opening

Caitlin wouldn't put down that baby the rest of the present opening!

Evan got a new turtle for his room. The old one broke just before Christmas so good thing we told Candy Cane (our elf) that he needed a new one!

And Caitlin got her own lady bug for her room (NOTE: with two, you MUST have two of everything, at least at these ages).

Baba and Casey opening

Attempt at Christmas PJ picture but they were too enthralled with our new Cars 2 DVD to care.  Merry Christmas!