Christmas Typhoon

Warning!  Video may contain some form of birth control.  Sorry it's a little dark.  

I think today may have had the lucky distinction of being Anaya's worst day ever.  Little girl screamed and cried all day long!  Ohmygosh.  I thought I was going to sell her.  Seriously.  Not seriously...but, you know...She got this little baby doll that dances from Santa and got a stroller to push it around in from Aunt P.  Not even Rosie was safe when she got near it to sniff at it - Anaya swung at her and yelled, "NO!"  Nobody better lay a finger on that doll.  Adam was like the Tasmanian devil, tearing thru the gifts and worrying about who they were from later.  We had a little heart-to-heart about that while the babies napped...Audie was the most laid-back, I guess.  He actually left four presents unopened.  He just threw in the towel.  Anaya and Adam had no problem at all helping out with that situation.  In the end, I think everyone was satisfied with their loot.  Alan and I, on the other hand...Well, we began the day exhausted and the day itself did not fall into the "relaxed" or "restful" categories, so we are pretty much zombies.  Glad that's over.  Hope next year is a little bit better...

Anaya with HER baby and stroller

Audie yelling, "EPE!" which means "open!"

 Seriously...what Adam asked Santa for..."my own glue"

 

 Yelling, of course.  Probably already yelling "MORE!" before she even finishes opening that one.

 Audie always has a "busted" look.  He was super-excited about Mater :)

 This one ended up being the favorite by the end of the day, I think...

 The aftermath.

The Tree Looks...Wait...What's That?

This year, given the fact that the twins are just about two, we figured the tree better be "mischievous-fingers-friendly," because we have an excess of mischievous fingers around here.  Case-in-point (these all occurred post-decorating):

So I separated all the sentimental and breakable ornaments from the unbreakable or mass-produced meaningless ones and let the kids go to town on the tree, decorating it as far as they could reach.  Then, I added the breakable ones to the top.  The tree ended up looking like this:

All things considered, it turned out really nice.  

But the night after we decorated it, I told Alan that I thought it looked like it was leaning.  As we were walking over, I spotted something that didn't quite look right.  Can you see it?

Here's a closer look:

As I was taking my normal decor down and storing it in the Christmas totes, replacing it with Christmas stuff, I noticed that Audie was rummaging through the totes.  I was making sure he wasn't breaking anything, but I was letting him explore.  He must have pulled this starfish out of the tote and shoved it into the tree (which is what he did with most of the ornaments he "hung").  We decided to leave it because...well, why not?  It's the perfect addition to our 2011 Christmas tree.

Happy Holidays!