Merry Christmas 2011

Santa came!

"SANTA!!! I KNOW HIM!!!" I love that movie.

He ate the cookies and left us a note!

He left us a ton of presents. Girl presents were in candy cane paper, boy presents in plaid. 

Santa's a little anal-retentive.

And he was ALMOST out of tape. Notice the masking tape...

Galina's doll house. As soon as she saw it, and the one little baby in it, she said, "Where's all the kids?!"

I love her.

The bouncy house. Everywhere you go here, someone is having a party with a bouncy house set up and Galina never gets to jump in it. Not anymore. She can expend those untold amounts of energy as often as I feel like listening to an airplane in the living room. 

If you ask Galina what Johnny got for Christmas, she'll say, "A cell phone." I'm crossing my fingers that a stranger will ask her. It is a cute "cell phone" though. It even has Galina recorded into one of the buttons saying "I LOVE YOU!"

Johnny loved it. Chewed on that string for at least twenty minutes. He got several other presents, and thoroughly enjoyed them throughout the day. But we kept it slow and let both of the kids play with their stuff. It took us two hours to open presents...

Johnny's gift to Galina was a box of four pairs of high heels. Galina LOVED it. She had no idea such things existed and she wore them ALL DAY. 

This was a dress she got and it took her exactly 15 minutes, from the time we started opening presents, to change into this dress and those heels. 

Brian and Johnny were on the same page this year. Brian found these reproduction 1940s heels for me. I had no idea. I knew I was getting a pair of shoes, but I was honestly expecting tennis shoes. 

They're awesome. Especially since now I get to build a few outfits around them!

Who doesn't love to bounce at 6:30 in the morning?!

Johnny enjoyed some tummy time in a safer environment.

This was Galina for the rest of the day. Except the little 20 minute stint in the pool. She got a bathing suit for Christmas. Only in Hawaii.

Had to webcam with my fam. Google+ is pretty cool, we were able to webcam with Mom and Molls in WA and everyone else in NC at the same time. It's insane and you can't hear anything (mainly because there are 9 kids in the background of NC, 2 in the background of WA, and 2 in the background of HI). But it's so nice to see everyone...together...? Can I call it that?

He's starting to enjoy hanging out in that thing. He's rolling more, he's pushing back on his hands and knees (not quite up, but almost) and he chews on everything. Everything. Maybe I should say anything...

Our final family picture with everyone's heads in tact. Of course, Galina had been smiling at the blinking light for so long that she was - done. Yeah, we'll call it that. If you look at it closely, you can see that it also looks as though she has drooled all over her face. Nope. Lip gloss. Princess lip gloss. Yup. Everywhere. But, she loves it.

I asked her to make a crazy face, just trying to shake things up a bit. This is at about 7:30 p.m. She bounced on and off all day. I figure I'll leave it out until New Years and then we'll take a break for a bit. 

This is asking for a smile.

This is asking her to LOOK at me and smile. Love the static. I finally sprayed Static Guard all over the inside. 

We had a wonderful Christmas. I went to Church and was able to sing with the choir. I loved it. It's been so long since I've sung with a choir and I've missed it. The program in sacrament was lovely. We miss all of our family. Can't wait to final have some concrete answers about what's going on with us so we can make even dream plans. Can't even imagine what we'll be doing next year. Not even hoping. Just trying not to go crazy with wondering. Soon. Maybe after the holidays. Well, Merry Christmas to all and to all (Yes, Johnny, that means you...now...for more than three hours...) a good night!