Better Late than Never!

Because we didn't spend Christmas with family this year, we documented everything with lots of pictures. We meant to post on (or even around) Christmas, but the weeks have slipped by, so for our families' benefit. . .Merry Belated Christmas!

One of our annual traditions is decorating gingerbread houses. The kids had fun decorating their very own houses all by themselves.

Steven's masterpiece

Sophie's Tree

Rachel's detail-oriented house

Ben just wanted to eat his!

Christmas morning began around 7:00 a.m. Rachel had woken up at 2:30 a.m. and I heard her downstairs rustling through the presents. "Santa came and brought me my bike!" she exclaimed.

"Rachel, do you know what time it is?"

"No," she replied.

"It's only 2:30."

"Oh," she replied, "That probably means I have to go back to bed. . ."

"Uh, yeah," I replied.

Ben was excited to know that he was a really good boy this year, so Santa brought him the Kirby video game he really wanted, even though Mom and Dad didn't think he needed more video games! That darned Santa. . .

Here's Steven opening up his Star Wars 3 book encyclopedia. He also got an air-rifle pellet gun--reminded us of our favorite movie, "A Christmas Story" (You'll shoot your eye out!) What the mom should have been saying was, "Make sure you shoot it outside and not in the house or you'll shoot HOLES in the wall!" (They used the gun to shoot targets INSIDE the house upstairs in the playroom under dad's supervision. Mom wasn't too thrilled with the plastic pellets and the mini-pellet holes in the wall--underneath the targets!)

Steven's favorite part of the day was playing outside in all the snow. He made a snow cave.

Sophie was in little-girl heaven with all the new toys and things to do. Here she is playing with a new baby Grandma Lacey gave her. She thought our family tradition of staying in our PJ's all day was "silly." When I gave her the choice of getting her clothes on after her nap, she hopefully said, "No, me want to stay in my pajamas." I said, "OK!" and she giggled incredulously!

Steve saved the best present (in his opinion, anyway) til last. . .Guitar Hero World Tour for the Wii. Here's Steven's reaction. . .

We spent the rest of the day rocking out. It was a very Merry Christmas in the Summers house (and a little too loud to take the annual Christmas nap--but lots of fun!!!)

After the aftermath of the presents, we had our annual Christmas breakfast of puff pancakes and sausage. (Steve calls them Popeye pancakes while the kids have named them Sponge Bob pancakes because they look like Sponge Bob.)

Thanks, Summers/Packer and Lacey family members for all of the fun and thoughtful gifts!