A bit of Christmas

I am way behind on posting pics... the last few evenings or afternoons when I've had a chance to catch my breath the internet has been down, so I haven't had a chance. But will get around to it all eventually. :)

We've had a really nice week. Brant's aunt left Monday afternoon and we spent the week just cleaning up and working around the house... the boys have settled down from all the excitement of our trip and Christmas and Brant's aunt visiting, so it was a nice quiet week. Brant even managed a couple afternoons at home, though he's gotten loaded down with orders in the past two days, so will be running crazy again starting Monday.

Christmas was really fun. The boys are at fun ages. They were still tired from our trip, so they were a bit fussier than normal... and they slept in til after 8 on Christmas morning...

Gifts are always a bit tricky here. There's nothing here that's really worth buying... most of the toys are rejects from shipments exported to the dollar store and cute coffee mugs and scented candles are thousands of miles away. I try to stock up on presents when we're in the States and dole them out a few at a time; though we pretty well exhausted my stash this year. We gave the little boys this huge Play Dough set (like 50 pieces and 20 tubs of dough) that I picked up the day after Thanksgiving several years ago for $10. They LOVED it and have spent hours upon hours playing play dough together. Brant's parents bought Elijah a new bike... which we picked up on our trip and shipped back here (without him finding out!) and for Caleb's new bike, we took Elijah's old bike to a car painting shop and they painted it for us; then we bought decals at a motorcycle shop and recovered the seat with vinyl from a furniture shop. Brant's found a basket and bell and his aunt brought them over. The result was pretty good - neither Caleb nor Elijah know it was Elijah's old bike. We didn't want to spend the money on a new bike - compounded with the already very rich image that we give off that both of our boys now have a bike, so it was an easy way to keep from having Elijah's old bike laying around... although in hindsight we could have kept Elijah's bike for Ezra... Ezra was VERY disappointed he did not get a bike. He kept wanting to sit on Caleb's or Elijah's (saying "I sit I sit"). He is happy though that now he gets Caleb's old ride-on bike to himself. :)

Truthfully, I was shocked Caleb totally fell in love with his bike. He's a bit timid and I was afraid he would think it was "too big." But he hopped right up on it. He still can't petal on his own, but he's getting there.

Stockings... we did stockings right when the boys got up and then had breakfast (egg casserole and pumpkin bread) before we opened gifts. The boys take FOREVER to open presents... it's a lot of fun. It took them a solid hour to just get all the trinkets out of their stockings...


Elijah's moustache that came in his cowboy dress up kit from my parents... quite a hoot.

Elijah is into snorkeling... can you believe I have a 6 year old who can snorkel? Comes from living less than an hour from a beautiful coral reef. :) We found this kid's size snorkel set on our trip and it was a last minute present. He was SO excited. (And by the way, he can swim, but when we go out to the reef he is either in a floatie or wearing a life jacket.)

Will try to get some more pictures up soon! Elijah starts home school back up this week; I wanted to get in a good week before I have to start teaching again on the 18th. (Yes, the MK school here in town still hasn't started back... they give the kids a full month so the dorm kids can go back to the tribes to be with their parents.)