Christmas Day

Picking up where we left off with the Christmas Eve post, the first person awake on Christmas Day was actually...Katie Wynn!  She woke up at 6 o'clock on the dot, but not because of the excitement of Santa Claus.  Just because that's around the time she normally wakes up.  I brought her to bed with me and Matt and tried to get her to lay down for a few more minutes.  By 6:15, she was jumping on the bed saying she was ready to get up.  Again, not because of Santa Claus.  This time just because we were at Mimi and Poppy's house and she was ready to get up and play.  I asked her if she thought I should get up and see if Santa came and brought presents while we were asleep, and she got a little quiet and kinda excited.

After going downstairs to turn on the lights and wake up my parents and get the camera ready, I texted Matt to let him know we were ready.  He came down empty handed and said she wanted me to get her.  Upstairs, she was sitting up on the bed waiting patiently for me to come carry her down the stairs to see what Santa brought.

We had fun setting their toys out the night before!  I'm trying hard not to go overboard with gifts for our kids, so they each got one big-ish gift from Santa and a few small things in their stockings.  To be honest, I might not have even gotten Thomas anything if we had been with my nephews.  It's not like he would've known any different!  

I missed her first looks into the room, but she initially went to Thomas's toy.  She had seen one of them before and knew what to do with it.  I had to gently guide her into looking over at her new kitchen!

We showed her that there were goodies in her stocking too!

While she was excited about the Frozen and Mickey Mouse bandaids and even the big girl panties, I think her very favorite thing was her orange.  She even stole the one out of Thomas's stocking too!

Thomas enjoyed his goodies too!

Not too long after we got down there, Parker joined us to see what Santa brought him.

And Ramer, the last to arise, was down a few minutes later.

After all the initial excitement died down, Katie Wynn loved going through everything in her kitchen and inspecting all the different foods and accessories.

Since my oldest brother, Nick, and his family don't stay the night, we have a tradition of going to their house bright and early for breakfast.  It's hard leaving all the toys from Santa after the kids have just seen them, but Beth always prepares a delicious breakfast that we can't wait to get over there and eat!  We pile into cars in our pajamas and make the five minute drive over.

We left there with full bellies and went back to our house.  We always get together with my Dad's side of the family on Christmas Day around 2:00, so I knew we'd need to get naps in a little early.  But when we got home, we each had one more present to open!  Lala and Poppa left 4 presents under our tree so that we'd have something from them to open on Christmas Day.  So fun!

Katie Wynn opened up some fruit that she can slice and cook with in her kitchen.  She loves getting to cut the pieces apart!

Thomas opened up a new Sophie the Giraffe chew toy and he got straight to work chewing on it!

And just like with every other toy that was supposed to belong to Thomas, Katie Wynn tried to claim this one too.  

As for us parents, Matt opened up the instruction manual to a new grill that he had already put together and used.  I opened up this sofa table from Ballard Designs that I was so excited about and use every single day now!

We took these pictures so that we could text them to Matt's parents to let them know we'd opened their gifts.  After I took my thumbs-up picture, Katie Wynn needed to take one too.

After opening our last gifts, we all took epic naps!  Katie Wynn actually slept on top of me on the couch which never happens.  Christmas morning is exhausting!

We always spend the afternoon of Christmas Day at my aunt's house.  I took similar pictures to some I knew I had taken last year (on the left) for comparison's sake.  Hasn't Katie Wynn grown so much??

Katie Wynn was being way too silly for pictures so Bren tried to show her how to sit in Matt's lap and pose.  It didn't really work, but Bren looks cute!

A couple of blurry family pics with the uncooperative two-year-old.

My brothers continue to fight the [losing] battle of trying to win Katie Wynn's affection.  They want her to like them so bad, but she just cries when they hold her!  Even when they do fun things like try to get her to crawl through their legs...still tears.

Thomas seems to be ok with them though...at least so far.  

Mom and I always talk about Thomas's evil grin.  He has this smile where he wrinkles his nose and it makes his brow furrow and his eyes look a little crazy.  I finally got a picture of it, below on the left.  Excuse the snot, he had a bit of a cold.

Here are some random family snapshots from throughout the day.

Katie Wynn became obsessed with my cousin Natalie.  She sat in her lap the whole time we played Dirty Santa and even let Natalie help open her gifts.  Since then, she has asked for "Natanee" to come over and play about a hundred times.  We will have to get her to babysit some time when she's home from school!

We play two rounds of Dirty Santa - once with the adult girls and then again with the men.  (The little kids just get their own gifts to open.)  This year, the girls were much dirtier than the men!  I think I ended up bringing home my fifth gift.

My aunt works for Nike and receives all kinds of merchandise throughout the year from their "giveaways."  It's way more than her family needs so she saves it up to divvy it up between all of us at Christmas time.  She has bags full of everything from shoes to work out gear to hats and socks and gloves.  In my family, there's a little bit of elbow throwing as we sift through and grab the good stuff in our sizes.  :)  (As if we haven't just opened gifts for two days straight!)

This year, thrown in with all the freebies was a spandex one-piece outfit.  I'm assuming it's for a cyclist to wear.  I bet my oldest brother, Nick, five bucks that he wouldn't put it on with a pair of neon orange shoes and walk out for everyone to see.  I can't beleive he actually did it!  I guess that just shows how cheap he is because of course he made me pay up!  The best part of the outfit was definitely the series of cut out holes in the back.  Can you imagine the tan line you'd get from wearing that!?

Now the joke's on my brother because I've put these pictures on the internet and it's gonna cost him more than five dollars to get them removed.  :)

After seeing Nick in full body spandex, we decided it was time to go!  Just kidding, but we really did leave shortly after that.  Both kids crashed pretty hard that night.  Good thing, too, because the next morning we hit the road for one last Christmas celebration...

Christmas Eve

This year, Christmas Eve started out in a very special way.  For the last nine years, our church has hosted a program called Hope for the Holidays where teachers from area schools submit families that could use a little extra Hope over the holiday.  Our church members then adopt these families (last year we adopted over 150 families!), shop for Christmas gifts for them, and then deliver those gifts along with lots and lots of food and health kits to the family on the morning of Christmas Eve. 

For the last six years that Matt and I have been celebrating Christmas as a married couple, we have adopted a family to shop for.  When scheduling allowed, we've included Anna and Wyatt in our shopping adventures and let them help pick out clothes and toys for our adopted children.  We plan to do the same with Katie Wynn and Thomas as they grow up.  However, since we both typically work on Christmas Eve, shopping for and wrapping our gifts was about as much participating as we could do.  We have always dropped off our bags of goodies and left them for someone else from the church to deliver.  

This year we both had the day off work and decided we wanted to really help spread the Hope this year.  We dropped the babies off (they are still too little to accompany us, especially since we didn't know what kind of neighborhood we would be traveling to) and joined our church members at the church.  After a quick meeting and prayer in the sanctuary, we pulled our loaded-down-with-gifts car in the drive-thru line to have the youth group fill it up with food.  There was so much food, too!  A huge laundry basket full as well as another box full.  And a gallon of milk that had just been purchased that morning.  And we got a 'health kit' bag for each of our children (we had three boys this year) that was full of wash rags, soap, shampoo, etc.  

Our adopted family doesn't live too far from where we do.  In fact, I drive past their house almost daily.  They knew to expect us that morning and they were ready!  The two middle-school aged boys were excited to see all the presents and the older, teen-aged boy helped us carry in the loads from the car.  The whole family was incredibly grateful for the Hope we had given them, but really, we were the ones touched by the experience.  It was amazing to see our congregation going out in fleets to spread holiday cheer to our community and we personally enjoyed getting to see the faces of the boys that we had shopped and prayed for.  What a great way to begin our Christmas Eve!  I look forward to carrying on this tradition with the kids as they get older.

---

After our first Santa Claus duties were complete, I hurried back to my parents' woodshop while the kids were still away.  We planned to pick them up around noon but I needed to help Santa's elves finish a few gifts first.  Talk about waiting til the last minute!  

The kids made it home just in time for a nice long afternoon nap before all the excitement of the evening began.  We wanted them to nap at home so they'd get some really good rest before going to my parents' house.  Matt left during their naps to go get started on his contributions (the beef tenderloin!) for dinner.  

My sweet pea woke up a little bit crabby from her nap but it wasn't anything that an oreo cookie and a present couldn't help cure.  Mrs. Kim, Thomas's babysitter that used to also keep KW, dropped by gifts while they slept so I let her go ahead and open that one up.  

Oreo face!

Excited about her new Elsa-Anna stickers!  (See them on her shirt?)

We quickly got ready for church and called Matt to tell him to come pick us up.  I love our church's Christmas Eve service.  It's at 5 o'clock in the evening and the church is always so packed!  I get to see lots of friends that I grew up with who come home to visit their families.  Plus, I love singing all the Christmas carols and lighting the candles at the end.

You know what they don't have at the Christmas Eve service?  Children's church.  Not that I was eager to get rid of my child or anything, but 5 o'clock in the evening in a jam-packed church after we've talked all day about Santa Claus coming to visit did not really equate to her wanting to sit still and be quiet.  I gave her a candy cane.  Why did I do that?  She's never had a candy cane before.  Why did I think that wouldn't become a royal mess?  I must've been desperate.  Matt had already left to take Thomas (who was burning hot and all stopped up) to get some medicine and my dad had his hands full with my nephews, so I was on my own on entertaining the wild one!  I had already lost a game of tug-of-war in THE AISLE when she tried to steal my lipstick bag, and she'd already emptied all the other contents of my purse into the pew.  She also very LOUDLY greeted her Daddy and Thomas when they came back.  The candy cane seemed like a good idea.  Here she is with her sticky mouth.  Yep, I resorted to church selfies to keep her quiet.

After approximately 12.5 hours in that pew, we made it to the end when we sing Silent Night and hold up our candles.  So magical!  Gives me the chills every single time.

"I do it!  I hold it!"

We left church and went straight to Mom and Dad's for dinner.  Mom and Matt, our resident cooks, still had a few things to do before we could sit down at the table.  Thomas was the first to get to eat - a festive meal of sweet potatoes and apples probably - and Uncle Nick was his high chair.

If Katie Wynn is going to go to anyone in the family other than Mimi and Poppy while Matt and I are present, it's going to be Aunt Beth.  

Here are the men/boys of the family.  Across the back, from left to right, is my oldest brother Nick, my dad (Poppy), Thomas (6.5 months), my brother Ben, Matt, and Ramer (3).  In the front are Jett (9) and Parker (6). 

Our first attempt at a girls picture had a photo bomb...

We had to have a redo, obviously.  It's a good thing Erin is adding a baby girl to the family soon because we are outnumbered!  Here we have Erin (and baby girl), Beth, Katie Wynn (2), me, and Mom (Mimi).  Up front is Bren (6).  It's fun to think this time next year there will be another cute face in this picture!

I think this is the first time we've been able to all sit down to eat dinner at the same time since some of these kids have been born!  We had to add a kids table but for a few minutes...maybe five?...it was actually quite peaceful while we all sat and ate together.  (Then the "When can we open presents?!" started!)

I absolutely love this picture.  Don't you know that hearing "We have to wait until everyone's done eating and the kitchen is cleaned up" is the hardest little thing for a toddler on Christmas Eve?! (That's when we open presents together.)  I can remember feeling EXACTLY like Ramer when I was little.  It's like it took for-ev-er for them to get the kitchen cleaned up, and the adults were the slowest eaters EVER!

I tried to get a few pics of the kids in front of the tree while the kitchen was being cleaned up.

The six-year-olds each wanted a turn holding Thomas, or "Baby Promise" as Ramer calls him.  :)

We delayed the present opening even longer by having the kids sit down for a story.  Uncle Ben volunteered to read it so they crowded around.  We want the kids to know the real reason we celebrate Christmas and this year we used a children's book for help with that.  

Things got a little crazy after this so I put the camera down.  I've said it before, but when the gifts are passed out, it becomes a free for all.  Paper gets ripped, bows start flying, there's shrieking and laughter and oohs and ahhs.  It's nice and chaotic, just how we like it.  I took a few pictures after all the gifts had been opened.  (Poor Thomas, who still wasn't feeling well, was put to bed before we even read the story.  He slept through his first Christmas Eve.)  

I monogrammed this cute little red pair of Converse tennis shoes for Katie Wynn and she absolutely loved them!  She put them on immediately with her smocked Santa dress.  :)

I love this picture of Katie Wynn.  She's inspecting a picture ornament that I made years and years ago.  Usually if I show her a picture of myself at Mom's house and ask her who it is, she'll say it's "Kay-Wynn!"

The last pictures that were taken before going to bed were of Bren helping Katie Wynn with her new scooter.  

We bid farewell to my brother Nick and his family and went upstairs to tuck the rest of the kiddos into bed.  Any guesses on which one - Parker, Ramer, Katie Wynn, or Thomas - was the first to arise the next morning?  I'll let you know in the next post.  :)

Christmas in Indiana

Our first Christmas celebration was the weekend before Christmas when we traveled to Indiana to visit Matt's parents and family.  We rented a van to travel in since as a full family of six, we don't fit in either of our cars.  The 8-ish hour drive went as smoothly as could be expected; each big kid was in charge of a little kid and they were huge helps!  The boys rode in the way back and the girls rode in the captain's chairs in the middle.  We really only had one meltdown from Thomas when he started getting hungry.  Since we took breaks when we stopped to feed him, we didn't arrive in Indiana til well past dinner time.  And when we did, we were quick to put jammies on the littles so we could hang out for just a few minutes before they went to bed.

Lala and Poppa had their tree up and lit and it was FULL of wrapped packages!  There was an unwrapped gift - an ELMO! - that was just waiting to be found.  It did not take Katie Wynn very long at all to spot him and she, of course, wanted to have him right away.  Luckily for her, her Lala said she could go ahead and have him.  Grandmothers were made for spoiling, after all.  (I resized these pictures too small.  Oopsie!)

Like the two babies, Anna also had one-piece pajamas to wear!  I can't imagine why Wyatt didn't want to get in on that, too.

Matt and I put the kids to bed before leaving for the night.  When we arrived back later the next morning, I was shown these pictures of my innocent little girl drinking out of a fancy little wine glass!

It reminded me of a very similar picture of her from last year when she just played with the glass.  This year, Lala let her actually drink her apple juice out of it.  Anything goes at Lala and Poppa's house!

I think Lala and Poppa may have each gotten some quality time with my babies that morning before the big kids woke up.  I'm afraid they might've been up and ready to go pretty bright and early!

After baths and getting everyone dressed, we hung around and waited for Matt's sister, Jill, and her family to arrive.  Wyatt and Anna were determined to get Thomas mobile!

While waiting for Katie Wynn's hair to dry, I pulled it back to see if it was long enough for a ponytail again.  Pretty close!  What do you think - let it grow back out or bob it off again?  I can't decide.

Jill was excited to get her hands on Thomas as soon as she arrived.  This was their first time getting to meet our newest addition.  They all seemed to love him and he loved them back!

The kids were all eager to open presents, so everyone gathered in the living room so we could get after them.  The boys played Santa and passed out the gifts and then it was a free for all on opening them up.  We made quick work of trashing Lala's living room!  (Special thanks to her for taking pictures; I stole most of these from her.)

I opened the coolest gift ever from Jill.  It may have to have a post of its own one day...

Katie Wynn was much more into opening gifts this year.  Every gift that she opened, though, had to be completely opened so that she could play with it immediately.  I had to constantly remind her that there were more gifts to open.  

Do you think I'll ever get a decent picture with both of my kids at the same time?  Before they're young adults? 

Before going to bed, Katie Wynn modeled her new house shoes for us.  They're kitty cat boiled wool boot slippers from Garnet Hill and are oh, so cute!  She had the little piggies last year but outgrew them.  Thomas got a pair of the fox ones!  They love wearing them around the house with their pjs.  

The next day we had plans that we were really excited about...getting to visit with Granddaddy!  Granddaddy is Matt's maternal grandfather and, at 92.5 years old, is a new reader to the blog.  (Hi, Granddaddy!!!)  I was excited to visit with him since I hadn't seen him since last Christmas, plus this was his first time to get to meet Thomas.  He also hadn't seen Katie Wynn since last year and she has changed a whole lot since then!

Pat and her sister, Cindy, had reserved a parlor room at his retirement community for the afternoon so that we would have plenty of space for all of us.  The rest of the family had plans to get together back at the retirement community on Christmas day, so we were super grateful that they also got together the weekend before so we could see as many family members as possible.  When we arrived, Katie Wynn was sound asleep in the car so I stayed back with her to let her get a few extra minutes of rest.  Matt took Thomas and the big kids on in and, from the looks of the pictures, Thomas and Granddaddy seemed to hit it right off! 

It took Katie Wynn a few minutes to warm up to everyone after she woke up.  The thing that got her going was her Elmo book of stickers.  She passed them out to everyone there, but the real winner was Granddaddy - he got probably 12 - 15 stickers himself! Even Elmo ones, and those are her favorite.  

We grouped together  the great grandchildren that were present (two were missing) for a picture with the Christmas tree and Granddaddy.  

After the pictures, Katie Wynn ran and got her Elmo coloring book and gave it to Granddaddy so they could color together.  She was enamored with him!  Aren't these pictures the sweetest thing ever? 

Miss Sassypants also did a little bit of posing on one of the couches before we had to leave.  

We beat Lala and Poppa back to their house that afternoon and, in a spur of the moment idea, asked the kids if they'd all sit together for a quick picture.  I knew I was pushing my luck as they grumbled into place so I promised I'd be really quick.  Ad that's when Matt and I witnessed a true Christmas miracle...four smiles from four kids all at the same time!

That was out last night in Indiana but Lala still had one more surprise for Katie Wynn...she knitted her some socks!  Katie Wynn was appropriately excited and immediately put them on.  They are so cute! 

When you have brand new socks, the best way to really test them out is to put your shoes on too.

And then a good little girl takes off her shoes and asks for a Bible to read.  Yes, a Bible.  I'm not kidding.  I wish I could take credit for her wanting to read the Bible becaues we read stories out of it every night, but the truth is that I don't even know how she knows what a Bible is...

So that was our Christmas celebration in Indiana.  It started with my daughter drinking out of a wine glass and ended with her reading the Bible.  :)  

We had a great time; I just hate that it was such a quick trip! It was the perfect kickoff for all our Christmas events.  Now we just have to figure out when we're gonna get to see Lala and Poppa again!

December Fun

Before we get into all of our actual Christmas festivities, I want to document some of the other fun things we did during the month so I don't forget.  As hard as I tried to shop and wrap gifts early so that we could sit back and just enjoy the season, it still got really busy and crazy!  We had so much to do that there was little time for rest...maybe that's what we'll do in 2015.  

My aunt and cousin came to visit one Friday night so we joined them for dinner at my parents' house.  I didn't really take any pictures of us there, but earlier that day Katie Wynn and I went to the bakery to pick up some cupcakes and I snapped these of her in the car.  She requests "her" (my) sunglasses every time she's in her car seat so she can "see better."

That night was a big one for Thomas as it was the first time he got to sit in the real high chair!  This chair is the same one my brothers and I all used and Thomas makes grandchild number seven to sit in it.  We had to tie him in so he wouldn't slide down but he loved sitting at the table like a big boy.

We had friends over for dinner one night and Katie Wynn absolutely loved having friends over to play with her.  We brought out the big box of balls for them to play in which is always a big hit with our visitors.

What's more fun that three kiddos in the tub?  Three kiddos in the tub with GLOWSTICKS!

At one point in the night they got really quiet, so I went back to check on them.  I found all three kids in our master bedroom pulling out toys together.  And, the evening wasn't over without one more climb into the box of balls.

The only encounter we had with Santa Claus this year was at church.  There was a pizza lunch for the kids following the service one Sunday and Santa made a surprise appearance.  As we waited in line to have our picture taken, I really talked it up to Katie Wynn about getting to sit in his lap and tell him what kind of presents she wanted him to bring.  I also told her she'd have to be really brave so that Thomas wouldn't be scared.  She was all about it.  Until our turn finally came, that is...  Thomas went first and just laughed and laughed at Mr. Claus.

I had to peel a screaming Katie Wynn off of me to get her to sit in his lap.  Even with Thomas still laughing and having a good time, she cried and begged to be picked up.  We took a family picture to show her that Santa wasn't someone to be scared of.  (When KW recounted this experience in the car on the way home, she told us that she loved Santa Claus and that Thomas cried but that she did not.  If you say so, sister.)

Some friends invited us to join them on a trip to the zoo to see their Christmas lights.  Since it was cold out, we dropped Thomas off with my parents and just took Katie Wynn.  We took our wagon for the girls to ride in and they loved it.  It was perfect for the zoo!  

The picture below on the right is of lights hanging over the area of the zoo where we were married.  Had I known they could put lights up on these wires, I totally would've requested some twinkle lights up there on our big day!  Shucks!

After a ton of fun seeing the Zoo Lights, we went out for pizza.  The girls had fun admiring this little Christmas tree that was next to our table.

Katie Wynn had a Christmas party at daycare so we put together some gifts for all of her teachers.  I wanted to do something stress-free (no baking! no crafting!) and I think what we came up with was both easy and super cute.  We took Sonic cups, filled them with red tissue paper, added a Sonic gift card and some Christmas candy, topped them with a lid and straw, and added a cute tag that read, "Have a BLAST this holiday season!"

For her classmates, I just added a quick tag to a bag of Teddy Grahams that said, "Have a BEARY Merry Christmas!"  Gotta love easy.  We also made a little happy for our neighbors' mailboxes.  They were a bag of Hershey's kisses and a chapstick with a notes that read, "Merry KISS-mas and CHAPPY New Year!"  We added dog bones too to the neighbors that we knew had dogs.

You know, now that I think about it, I didn't hear from anyone that received any of these gifts.  I hope that doesn't mean they didn't like them!

For a few days in a row, Katie Wynn got on a kick of stealing Thomas's socks off his little feet and putting them on her hands.  She told her Daddy that they were keeping her hands "nice and cold."  She keeps us laughing!

I posted this picture on Instagram but it's worth re-sharing.  Thomas is officially crawling now but at the time this was taken, he was just scooting backwards.  He was busy scooting himself around the room when he scooted himself right into a little bit of a pickle...stuck under the bed! 

On the 23rd of December, we joined the Earls and Cooks for dinner.  My sweet Thomas is always a good poser for pictures.  

Things usually start to get a little hairy though when I add his sister in for the pics.  Is there some understood sibling rule about never smiling at the same time?

Baby Henry joined them on the couch for some pictures too!

And, you know, the photoshoot was going just fine until Katie Wynn tackled her little brother.  

Everett wasn't feeling up for pictures since he'd just opened up some fun new toys.  It didn't take KW long to join him down on the floor.  Toys are way more fun than pictures, I guess.

Here are a couple more random shots of Katie Wynn playing her version of dress up.  In one picture she's dressed as Santa Claus and the other she's dressed as Thomas...turns out putting his pj pants on instead of her own is kinda hard!

On the second to last day of December, I was lucky enough to get to sleep in with both my babies.  (No really, I'm not being sarcastic...they both slept til almost 8!)  We had fun lazing around in bed taking pictures.  By the time these were taken, Daddy had already gotten up, given Thomas a quick bottle and gotten him back asleep, gone for a run, and taken a shower!  (Showoff.)  My mom and I always joke about how KW looks like she's wearing a wig when her hair isn't pulled back with a bow.  I can't help but be jealous of her hair.

And on the very last day of December, my little munchkin pulled up to a standing position in his bed!!  This mama was not ready for this at all!  Especially when, while sitting on the floor taking pictures, I realized he was leaning over to see me and was about to fall out.  Woo - that would've been a major mom fail! Doesn't he just look so proud of himself in these pictures? He was able to pull up on his bumper because I sat him up in his crib.  Thankfully he can't get into a sitting up position from laying down yet, so we have a few more days before we really have to lower his crib for night time.  

Ok, I know I just made it through the whole month of December, but next I'll be back with four separate posts for each of our Christmas celebrations!

Lala and Poppa Came to Town!

The day after Thanksgiving, Matt's parents - otherwise known as Lala and Poppa - arrived at our house for a 12 day visit.  We were so glad to see them!  Not only were they coming to celebrate the December birthdays with us, but they were also doing us a HUGE favor by keeping our rugrats while we were in Palm Springs.  I was glad that Katie Wynn and Thomas would be in good hands while we were away, and I was also glad that we'd get to visit with them for a few days before we left!

Their first couple of nights here, we had the big kids at our house too.  The babies got to wear their Christmas pajamas for the first time and we started a new Christmas tradition - opening up a Christmas book each night during December to read before bed.

Each Christmas book was opened with much excitement by Katie Wynn was given to anyone (and everyone) in the room so they could read it to her.

We had a weekend of fantastically warm weather and were able to spend some time hanging out on our patio.

After we left on vacation, Lala and Poppa continued on with the weekday routines and opening one book each night.  I can't wait to re-wrap the books so the kids can open them again next year.  

Lala and Poppa left our house a day or two after we returned from Palm Springs, but we got to see them again less than two weeks later when we traveled to their house!  Pics coming soon...