Wong Christmas

We spent this afternoon and evening celebrating Christmas with the Wong side of the family. Ari and Betty prepared a feast. We ate early and then opened presents. The girls will be the best dressed kids in town thanks to Betty and Peter - they got so many adorable outfits. Barclay got the floor mats he wanted so badly. Ana got John a really cool blanket with a picture of him racing on it. The best part of the evening, though, was when Aunt Ana and Uncle John gave Lily her toy kitchen. Lily was so in love with the thing that she insisted John "open it" right away and he got stuck putting it together too! It was so much fun watching her pretend. She would play for awhile and then say "Thank you guys". The first time she said "Thank you guys" the thank you was accompanied by a lot of jumping and bouncing. I've never seen her that excited about something. We are now completely exhausted - I don't have to go to work tomorrow, but poor Barclay does! We had a wonderful Christmas and hope everyone else did too!

SANTA ARRIVES!

Turns out, both girls must have been very good this year b/c Santa paid us a visit last night. When we woke up there were lots of presents under the tree. Lily loved her easel ! I decided that she's not old enough for the dry erase side of the easel yet, though, b/c the minute I left the room she drew a nice black line on our white carpet - ugh! Santa must not have known that would happen. So I'll be buying some big sheets of paper so she can continue her crayon creations. Addy got a neat toy she can crawl around after and her first Christmas book. Santa also brought a lion punching bag, but that must have been for both girls b/c he didn't leave a name on it. The girls also opened their presents from Uncle Matt and Aunt Taryn and me and Barclay this morning. So they had a lot of fun!

Haley Christmas

Our first Christmas celebration was with the Haley side of the family. We spent Saturday-Monday in the Haute enjoying everyone's company. Matt, Taryn and Gabe couldn't make it, but everyone else was there. It was a nice and low key couple of days. It was really nice to be able to spend some time with Joe since he's leaving for Africa in a couple of weeks and we won't see him until August (sadness). On Saturday night we went to Aunt Kates for the extended family Christmas party. It was fun and crazy as always. For some reason it seemed like there were even more people there than usual. Sunday we had a nice dinner with grandmother and exchanged gifts with her (we also snuck in opening a few extra gifts despite dad's protests ). The picture of Lily vacuuming cracks me up - Cinderella cleaning :) Then on Christmas Eve we opened the rest of the presents and went to mass. Lily was very distracted by the manger scene at Church and kept wanting to go up and see it. Overall, though, they weren't too bad at mass this time (especially considering that there is no cry room option at St. Ben's).

Christmas Season is here!

Just a quick post with pics from the weekend - day care Christmas Party, set up for the wine tasting/food drive, and playing in the snow. (Taryn, I couldn't resist opening Lily's outfit box - she wore the fleece outfit to her party. I loved it!).

The great camera drop

We've had a lot going on in the last couple of weeks, so I may not have been able to update the blog anyway....but if I had tried to I would have been unable b/c I dropped and broke our camera! Barclay and I were in New Orleans from Thurs to Sunday last week for Jordan and Diane's wedding (Barclays best bud from California). The girls stayed with mom and dad and had a blast. We missed them really badly. Their wedding was on Friday and it was beautiful. There were only 15 or so of us there, mostly Jordan's family. It was outside in a courtyard at the Ritz Carlton in the French Quarter. During the ceremony, some guy who looked familiar came out on his balcony and waived to everyone. He was about 20 feet above out heads I'd guess. Anyway, after he stood there for a while I mentioned to Barclay that he looked familiar. Barclay's comment was "that's b/c it's Billy Joel". So long story short, Billy Joel broke my camera - I tried to get a picture, dropped the camera on the tile floor, and crash bang, broken camera. We had a great time all weekend, though, that will go undocumented. We ate at nice restaurants, walked around the french quarter and the river markets, took a trolley ride to the garden district, etc etc....oh, and we drank too much b/c we were in New Orleans!

The week was crazy though b/c we got in at about 7:00 on Sunday then had to drive to the Haute to get the girls, drive back to Indy and go to work the next day, and the next and the next, etc. Then tonight we went to the girls' day care Christmas party at a place called the bounce zone. I do have pictures of that...I just have to figure out how to download still pictures from the video camera. So those will be posted later - just picture it....loads of bouncing 2 year olds! It was a neat place and definitely wore the girls out - they went to sleep as soon as we got home.
Tomorrow we have our wine tasting/food drive (hope people still come b/c it's supposed to snow hard) and then on Sunday we have Barclay's office's Christmas party. Can't catch our breath lately!