Holiday Joys

So in all the usual craziness of the holiday season with the added benefits of school not ending until the 23rd of December for all of us... Christmas ended up being a very small, quiet affair without any pictures. Christmas Eve morning we drove over to Saratoga to Grandma and Grandpa Ostrom's (and of course Uncle Matt's). Mostly we just enjoyed getting a chance to relax and enjoy the time with family. We watched some movies, made a movie, and of course had a nice Christmas morning opening presents. Thankfully the kids haven't gotten too grabby and crabby about the "I wants" yet and were content to eat breakfast first - a tradition from Christmas with my grandmother Burlington. They both got lots of stuff to enjoy including a remote control car for Ryan, movies for both of them, a new My Little Pony for Alicia's collection, lego sets for both of them, and flashlights - these guys are obsessed with all of the above anyways so it was great!

The holiday fun doesn't stop with Christmas around here though. Every year some friends of ours have a combined Christmas/New Year's Eve Day celebration that allows for the rest of the holidays to be spent not feeling conflicting obligations. We've kind of become extended family so New Year's Eve day we went and had another round of presents and excitement there.

Kind of fuzzy but Ryan was enjoying playing with one of his new planes

Alicia playing with her light up ball... she was quite thrilled at having a second Christmas and more stuff!

Presents were followed by a great game of dodgeball that everyone enjoyed (even me although I was the party crasher hanging out on my computer trying desparately to finish up my final paper for one of my classes... a week late...)

I love that both Ryan and Mark are in the air in this one.

Alicia was right in there playing hard.

Go for it Zed!

When we got back home we took the kids outside and shot of some fire works and let them play with sparklers.


Ryan gave out at about 10:30. Alicia made it to midnight. I think the best comment of the evening was from the newly 9 year old as we were all toasting the new year with our sparkling cider... "Global warming was so last year." He always cracks me up!