Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!!!

Above are the Ciardo and Ziegler great-grandchildren on my mom's side of the family on Christmas Eve. Pictured are: Lukas, Jakob, Aveya, Andrew, and Nikolas.

Lyn-Marie and Phillip shared their first Christmas as an engaged couple!

Andrew and Daddy are both excited about Santa's visit.


This is our living room after Santa stopped by the place.

Above is Andrew's much desired PlayMobil castle. It's all he asked Santa to bring him for Christmas. Andrew must have been on the Nice List!

Christmas morning at our house had to be snappy because for ONCE in our children's lives, they slept in. We didn't set the alarms because the kids are always up by 6AM, and on this particular morning, they slept in until 8AM!! The sleep was glorious, but it only gave us 20 minutes to have our own special family Christmas before we had to be at my parents' house for breakfast at 10AM. Above is a video of Aveya's favorite gift: Ariel's necklace from the Little Mermaid. She wore it all day and repeatedly pushed the button- much to EVERYONE's "enjoyment".


Our little Prince and Princess on Christmas morning. Aveya was SOOO much more fun this year!


Stop #1 Christmas morning: The Hackbarths' house. My mom made us her traditional Christmas breakfast, which was delicious! Yum, yum! Then the kids were spoiled with a gazillion gifts. Lyn-Marie wasn't able to come in the morning, so Phil had to settle for snuggling his pup, Dagny. Dagny didn't mind the extra attention- as you can see.

Aveya has Grandpa Hackbarth wrapped around her little finger.

Peek-a-boo! Aveya loved her tunnel tent.

Stop #2 on Christmas Day- The Zieglers' house.

Here's our group shot.

Stop #3 on Christmas Day: The Knolls' house. Here is Aveya with Grandpa Knoll. She loves listening to him talk.

Ryan's cousin, Lance, bought Andrew and Alex Nerf guns and they had a great time shooting eachother from the crawl space.

Finally- Aveya and I got some quality mommy-daughter time upstairs together.

Above is a quick video of Aveya's most recent ability- eating with a fork!

Auntie Lana, Uncle Ben, Alex, and Leo got Andrew a fireman costume for Christmas. He loves all the tools that came along with his coat. He even shoved his feet into his tiny boots from last year to complete the look (his regular boots are at daycare).

For the final picture- I know it is hard to see- but this is a page out of Andrew's Pokemon binder. Andrew received this for Christmas, and, last night he started to put them into it. I sat down to look at it today, and he had ALPHABETIZED them. I kid you not- here is the "S" page. If I've said it once, I've said it a million times- My son is a genius, and we must get him into martial arts immediately so he can defend himself on the playground.