Christmas Day

Well as usual, Santa found us! Although---I WISH we could have slept in longer! Garrin and I were dumb and went to bed at 1am and right at 3am....who should appear but.........no NOT 8 tiny reindeer! It was Jaycee. She actually wanted to open presents! I know---hard to believe. We were mean and told her no...that we agreed on 6:30 the night before....and she actually started crying. Then I felt bad because she IS nine and was excited...but it really WAS a terrible time to be awake. I had her sleep in our room and told her to wait a couple of hours. Well---that's exactly what she did---at 5am she woke me again (I wonder if she ever went back to sleep?) and again wanted to get up. I held her off until 5:30 and then at 5:45 let her wake up the rest of the kids.

Santa decided to do a joint present and gave us 2 sleds and a Wii. Brother Devin decided that the girls needed CANDY and actually gave them EACH 72 Air Heads. Wow...

I, as usual, got caught up in the Christmas morning stuff and never did take any other pictures. Maybe it's because I tend to video tape Christmas??? So that's it on the presents and pictures.

We got about another foot of snow on top of the one foot we already had. Devin decided to get his car out and got it stuck in the cul-de-sac. I had a good laugh at him and then Shawnee and I pushed him out. Here's a picture of our house buried in the snow.


We decided to get dressed up warm and try out our new sleds. Kaylee and Jaycee tried sledding down the mountain of snow made by the snow plows and bobcats and snow blowers.

After Garrin was finished plowing out the driveway, Devin did doughnuts and pulled the girl's around on the sleds behind the 4 wheeler

Garrin took over driving and I sat on the back watching the kids and taking videos and pictures. Garrin would try and dump the kids off the sleds...and in the meantime about lost me a few times. I was trying to video/picture take with one hand and sit backwards and hold on with the other. It's not a great video, but here's one of them that I got. They are dropping like flies off the sleds. They would get up and run to try and get back on the sleds while Garrin would start and stop to try and trick them.

Yes--a few casualites laying in the snow...sometimes they would lay there a little longer than I thought they should and I thought they were really hurt...but then they would finally jump up and try to catch us and laugh. Even Jaycee didn't cry (ok...once) but that's a miracle in itself!

Devin would just wait until you drove by and then jump on a sled--empty or not. Sometimes he'd land right on the girls and hold on. It was pretty funny---I haven't laughed so hard in a LONG time! They'd try and push each other away and usually Jaycee was victorious and the big kids would fall off.

We did this for at LEAST 2-3 hours. Nobody was cold (except the photographer) because they warmed up everytime they fell off and then ran after us. Grandma and Grandpa Berger came to visit us so we came in for me to warm up. We played the Wii most of the rest of the day, watched (or slept) through most of the movie Fred Claus, and then tried to get everyone to bed early. A very memorable Christmas if I do say so myself!