Christmas Day 2010

Loving his new bike.

Dad blowing the bubbles he got in his stocking.

Shayne tinkering with his new GPS, while I'm messing with my new flash.

Cheesy grin while I'm playing with my flash and fish-eye lens...he's a little over exposed, but I couldn't resist the smile...and lack of pants. :)

One of my most favorite things about Christmas...the chocolate. I loved using the macro-lens on this.

And...believe it or not my Christmas Cactus was in full bloom for Christmas. It's never been in full bloom before...always at the end with withering blooms on Christmas. Again...I'm in love with the macro-lens...just need to really learn how to use it. :)

I had these ornaments personalized while in Anchorage. They are perfect for our us...especially the family one. Makes my heart smile. :)

I love Christmas! I love picking out the gifts, wrapping the presents, decorating the tree and house, listening to the music...I love it. I love it even more with a little munchkin who loves it too.

This Christmas was so fun. The Bug got a balance bike. It doesn't have wheels. He just uses his feet and when he gets good at it, he can run and then lift his feet and balance. This way he's ready to move to a regular bike sooner without training wheels. They are all the rage in Europe I guess. Santa thought it would be fun for him...and so did he. He immediately saw the bike, put on his new helmet and climbed on. He then promptly asked..."No pedals? Pedals gone! Where pedals?" We had to convince him it was ok to still ride with without pedals. So funny. He spent quite a bit of time trying it out. It's a little difficult to maneuver it in our small house, but he definitely tried. :)

He finally moved on from the bike to the other things sitting on the couch. But first we had to read the Christmas Story from Luke 2. Shayne's family had this tradition that before you could open any presents you read the story of the Birth of Christ, and we decided to keep this tradition in our family. I really like it, b/c it makes you stop on an otherwise crazy day, and remember why we are celebrating in the first place. So glad Shayne does this for our family.

Anyway, The But had lots of fun opening presents...but was little over-stimulated. He wasn't sure what to play with, so he kept going back to the bike...which was fine with us. :)

I totally surprised Shayne with a new GPS...the Garmin Oregon 450. It's a small touch screen GPS that we can geo-cache with as a family, but still does all the "stuff" Shayne wants to do with fishing/hiking/biking/etc. He loved it. It's a pretty sweet GPS, and I'm excited to go and geo-cache with it this summer.

Shayne got me stuff for my camera. A nice flash and a fish-eye/macro lens with a couple of books to get me educated on how to actually use them. I've been asking for this stuff for awhile. Our regular photographer/friend was called as our bishop in March. He's a young bishop with a young family, so now he's always gone doing "Bishop Stuff", and I feel horrible about asking him to take pics. So...I determined I was going to learn how to use my nice Nikon D3000 camera and take good pics on my own. I'm learning slowly, but surely, and I'm glad Shayne got me this stuff. I spent the morning messing around with my new stuff, while Shayne tinkered with his GPS and The Bug wandered from new toy to new toy.

My big surprise was a $100 gift certificate to a day spa here in town. Ya...I get to go get pampered and feel pretty while I'm pregnant! Yeah for me!!

Later that day we had some snow crab and shrimp for dinner. This is normally a Christmas Eve tradition, but since we were at the Anderson's we had it for dinner instead. We seriously just relaxed the whole day...we never changed out of our Christmas pj's. Well, The Bug changed into his new Carhartt overalls, but they started bugging him so he took them off (with a little help).

We had such a great day. This Christmas was so much more fun than last Christmas. Part of that reason is b/c The Bug was more into it this year, and part of it is b/c I'm not depressed about a failed FET attempt. Amazing how being pregnant and knowing we are getting a new baby in a few months can change an attitude. :)

Now we are excited to see what Christmas next year will be like with a 3 year old AND a 7 month old...can't wait!!