Christmas...wrapped-up

We hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and got to spend it with your loved ones! We had an eventful couple of days and would have loved to drag it out all last week and this weekend... but it is over for now and the countdown can begin for next year. I wanted to wait until after the new year to clean up but I am afraid we killed our tree... again (now I remember why we got a fakey in AZ). When we bought the tree we brought our stand to see how much we needed to cut to make it fit. The answer was none so the guy at the lot told us to drill holes in the side for it to get water. Well that didn't work and the water level has been the same since the day we bought the tree (two weeks ago) so now the tree is CRISPY! I don't even turn on the lights because I am afraid it will burst into flames. So, I guess this year we will clean up Christmas early. Oh well! This year we spent Christmas Eve with Kevin's family at his Grandma's house. We had a great time and got to see family that we don't get to see too often. It was so cute to see Caralin with her cousins and we were finally able to get a picture of all the kids together. We woke up Christmas morning to a cranky toddler with a yucky nose but thankfully her mood changed quickly when she saw that santa had come. We opened gifts together and played until the afternoon where we went to my parents to celebrate. It was a nice day! My mom made lasagne and salad and breadsticks (she always tries to do something other than the typical, and we all love it)! My mom really outdid herself this year. She worked hard to make the evening fun and special. After a mountain of wrapping paper and presents she had a couple of games for us to play to win a mixture of pink-elephant junk, lottery tix, and gift cards. It was a lot of fun! Caralin got so many nice gifts and loves to play with them all. Her playroom finally looks like one fit for a toddler and not a baby! She will actually play for longer than 10 minutes in htere now! (We'll see how long that lasts.) For some reason I was so absorbed in passing out and watching everyone open presents that I didn't take many pics (which is really unlike me). My dad has some and I will try to get them soon so I can post more. Enjoy!