It's Christmas Time!

Christmas was coming! Our wall was filling up with Christmas cards.  Love seeing all the pictures!

Also it's not Christmas without "It's a Wonderful Life!"

"Merry Christmas, you wonderful old Building and Loan!" 

Christmas morning Tommy got up to see the Christmas Magic!

Yes I apologize right now. I ALWAYS forget to turn my phone.  AAHH! Drives me nuts! 

Then it was time for family to come over.

 Our house was clean! For a few minutes!

The basement was ready for shredding!

And shred they did!!

Again, this would have been way better sideways but you get what you get and you don't throw a fit. :) 

It was loud. We need to insulate something somehow.  Wow.  Awesome shredding being done though.

We opened our presents on Christmas Day for the #KeiperThornburgXmas and guess what my parents got all the RCHS graduates? State Champion T-shirts! Yay!

I had my mom go ahead and use the continuous shooting setting that snaps 10 shots and then told everyone to move.  This equals the best gif ever!!

Our living room was a complete disaster area after we were done opening presents. 

While the kids watched Shrek together...

We played Cards Against Humanity.  The tagline for the game is "A Horrible Game for Horrible People."

This is true.

On Friday after Christmas we were all pretty tired.  The only thing we had strength to do was put Charotte's hair in a tiny 80's record producer mullet-tail.  Too funny and too cute.  Look at how long it's getting!

Andrew went down to B-town to see some friends who were in town for Christmas.

You better twerk!

On Saturday I woke up to this.  Charlotte had blueberries the night before.  Great! She wasn't feeling good but we decided she was feeling well enough for Christmas number 2 with the Thornburgs!

 Banjo came down from Chicago for Christmas.  He had a great time!!

 It was a real dog party! Banjo and new puppy Cooper had a GREAT time together! It was fun to watch them play.

Tommy and Charlotte aren't used to dogs so they were a little scared but they did fine.  We had a lovely Christmas at Erin's.  Good food, good dogs, good times! The kids got a LOAD of presents! They were so excited!!

Charlotte cashed out early and ended up sleeping the rest of the night.  Poor babe was so tired.  Look at her little belly! Just love it.

What a lovely week of Christmases! Merry Christmas everyone!

Christmas Eve 2014

We made cookies for Santa! Giant ones! Allergy-free ones!

 They were actually pretty delicious for not having eggs or milk in them. At least we thought that until he starting puking in the middle of the night. But we think that was the stomach flu. 

Tommy was totally stoked about his reindeer food and Christmas cookies.  We also left some almond milk too.  Gotta have something to wash them down!

That night, I wanted to get some pictures of the kids in their Christmas Jammies. 

 So when I asked them, what do they do? They start wrestling.  Sounds about right.

 But then things took a turn for the cute!

 Let's play hide and seek.  They were playing with Dada, by the way.  This wasn't a one-sided game. :-)  I was messing with different settings on my camera, if you can't tell. :) Smurf Christmas!

 Then it was time to open a gift!

 Don't make us stop for pictures, MOM!

 That's it, I'm outta here!

 Then it was time for family pictures.  I set up the timer and it started snapping away. 

 Here is an outtake of what that's like. 

Then we finally got a good one!

Yay! Merry Christmas (Eve) to all and to all a good night!

Disney Vacation 2014: Part 5

 On Friday, we went to the Magic Kingdom again.  We knew going into it that it would be a lot busier according to the crowd calendar on Undercover Tourist. 
It definitely was!

 Our first ride of the day was Aladdin's Magic Carpets.  Even Charlotte could ride that one! (Where's a selfie stick when you need one?)

 We knew going into Frontierland that Tommy wasn't quite tall enough to ride the 40 inch rides.  So instead of skipping them, we just stuffed his shoes with feminine products and walked on the rides! This is a selfie from Splash Mountain.  We were worried we would get wet and be cold (since it was in the 60s) but it wasn't bad at all!
(Quick side story: When we went to the Magic Kingdom on Tuesday, we tried to get him to stand and be measured for Thunder Mountain Railroad.  With us telling him to stand up straight and the cast member trying to direct him to touch his head to the board, he got really confused and freaked out especially late at night after a very long day so he dropped to ground and cried.  Another cast member saw this and thought he was upset because he wasn't tall enough for the ride.  She came over and offered Tommy one of her pins to make him feel better! Disney Magic! :) He immediately felt better and he picked out a Statler pin.  Yep, that's one of the old men in the balcony from the Muppets.  No idea why he picked him but that's what he wanted.  Ha!)

 The one on the left is Waldorf and the one on the right is Statler. Good choice, Tommy!

 Here's our professional picture from Splash Mountain.  You can barely see Tommy behind my mom.  Too funny.  Maybe he wasn't quite tall enough for the ride.  Haha!

 The next ride was the Thunder Mountain Railroad.  We decided to do a rider switch for this one so Charlotte and I waited for Andrew, Tommy, Mom, and Dad to go by.

We found a photog while we were hanging out and got a cute picture. 

There they go!!

 I tried to zoom in and this was the best I could do. Heading to the right!

Now to the left! Zoom! Tommy loved it!

 Then it was time to hand off Charlotte and it was Tommy, Mama, and Dada's turn! Hands up!! :)

 After that, we went on the Barnstormer. Tommy can't get enough of those roller coasters!

 Speaking of roller coasters, we just HAD to go on the 7 Dwarfs Mine Train again. Since it was busy, there was quite a wait.  PLUS the ride kept shutting down!! So frustrating.  But Tommy was bound and determined to ride it again.  We did a rider switch this time so both my parents took Charlotte on the best rides for grandparents and grandchildren. They did the People Mover, the Carousel of Progress and the Hall of Presidents.  Yeah.  We were in line FOREVER.  Luckily there's lots to do in line so that was another reason Tommy didn't mind the wait.  

So we finally got on the ride after what seemed like an eternity.  Here's the infamous shot! Tommy LOVES putting his hands up on roller coasters.  He may be afraid of a lot of things but roller coasters is not one of them. I have no idea how he knew how to look directly at the camera.  Such an amazing picture.  (Andrew is in front of us to the left but his face was covered up in all the photos. :( Boo.)

 Then he got to ride with Grandma and Grandpa.  Their wait was no more than 5 minutes with the rider switch.  We got the shaft on that one.  Ha! But hey, we didn't have to go to the Carousel of Progress so we'll call that a win, I guess. :-)

They certainly look like they're having as much fun as Tommy!

While Grandma, Grandpa, and Tommy were on the Mine Train, I went and got my picture taken with Rapunzel... by myself.  Charlotte fell asleep.  I had no excuses.  Rapunzel played it off well.  She just kept talking about my satchel.  Oh Disney Princesses. 

 My mom got one more picture of Elsa's Ice Castle. 

 Here are more Christmas decorations that we captured on the way out.

My mom took this quick picture in front of the tree at the front of the park.  We were getting the heck out of there. The kids were READY!

 The next morning we flew home.  The kids did GREAT on the plane once again.  I am not even sure what Charlotte is playing with here.  It didn't matter.  She was a champ.  But she and Tommy were still really tired from a crazy exciting and exhausting week. 

This picture is very telling. We were waiting to pick up our luggage.  They were dunzo.  Charlotte was asleep (she never fell asleep on the plane though!) and Tommy wanted to fall asleep.  The end to an excellent vacation! If you don't come home exhausted from Disney, you probably didn't do it right.

What a wonderful week we had.  Thanks to my parents for all their help with the kids.  We couldn't have done it without them. 

It's still definitely the most magical place on earth.  We can't wait to go back!! :-)