Christmas Day

Well, everyone must've been good this year, because Santa came to Mawmaw's house! Aidan nearly started crying when he opened up a box of clothes from Santa, but he was quickly laughing again when he opened up his Bat Cave.

Here is Ava starting to unwrap her gifts on Christmas morning. Santa brought her a broom and dustpan, which she loves playing with.



Can you tell that Ava was excited about the dollhouse that Pawpaw gave her? She also played with the new teaset that Mawmaw gave her for almost an hour that night. Mawmaws hardwood floors took on approximately a gallon of tapwater...


Ava and Aidan showing off their new bug flashlights that Emily and Mark got them. These go along with Ava's awesome Treehouse Tent. It is now taking up the majority of our basement (thanks Em...), but Ava is really loving it. She moves her baby dolls, blanket, and books into the tent, gets settled, then moves them all out. Repeat.

Aunt Val got the kids these awesome raincoats. They were going nuts over these things. I think Aidan is trying to look tough in this picture. Because obviously Batman is tough.

One of the best things about the day was that we got snow! We took the kids out to play in it after they opened their Santa gifts. They had so much fun! Here Ava is sporting the new hat and mittens that I ordered for her in OCTOBER. They were on backorder for 9 weeks, so we finally got them a few days before Christmas. Still worth it. :)

Sledding! Here we're riding down the "hill" in front of the house on Aidan's new inflatable sled. The hill conveniently ends in a pile of huge rocks. So the girls and kids were on sledding duty while the guys were responsible for catching us at the bottom before we popped the sled and earned ourselves a set of stitches. Jake also took them on rides all through the yard on the plastic sled Aidan got a couple years ago. He makes a pretty good one-horse open sleigh.

Of course there was a little snowball fighting. Ava even got into it! Here Aidan is about to pound Jake.

Ava got cold and wanted to go inside, but the rest of the crew stayed out and built a pretty darn good snowman. He obviously has good taste in college sports teams, too. All weekend long Ava wanted to look out the window at the snowman, and then she would tell everyone that he was dancing - yes, we have watched the Frosty movie approximately 23 times in the past week.