Christmas 2010!

Happy New Year, loyal readers!

Before time gets away from me again, I thought I'd better do a quick Christmas update.

As always, celebrating the birth of Jesus is a huge event in our house - and also very fun. Here's the rundown...

First up was trying to take a picture for our family Christmas card. I can pretty much just call it a flat-out disaster.

Not because of me, of course. Here I am being super photogenic and charismatic.

And here is Sully ruining a picture by trying to stuff an entire jingle bell into his mouth. So not photogenic.

Oops... I might have something to do with this situation denigrating. Pretty sure that it was after this picture when Mom gave up entirely.

Next on the agenda was my first ever Christmas concert!! It was pretty amazing - I had a captive audience for roughly 30 minutes. Trust me - I made the most of it.

Here I am angelically making my way across the stage.

And here I am belting out one of the eight songs we sang. Notice the tip of my head and the open mouth? During our practice sessions, I was a quick study and figured out how to best project my voice above the others.

Believe me. It worked.

Per usual, preparing for Christmas was almost as fun as the actual event itself! Peedles and Poppy rolled in just in time to help us make Santa the standard cookie fare.

On four pans of spritz cookies, Sully and I manged to use two-and-a-half bottles of sprinkles. Nice ratio, eh?

Poppy rewarded us both with hugs for going heavy on the sprinkles.

Mmmm...beaters!

Enjoying the fruits of our labor is the best! You can see in this picture that we are already starting to get a little crazy-eyed from the sugar rush.

Later, we packed everyone into the car and traveled south to a state park in FL that was having a big light festival.

True to form and despite the amazing display of Christmas delights, Sully treated everyone and everything like they were highly suspect. In case this hasn't come across in past updates, he is a very cynical, hard-to-crack individual.

While I was busy stuffing my face with roasted marshmallows,

he was busy policing the grounds of the state park. Who knows what he was looking for, but he was on a hunt. Peedles and Poppy most certainly had their hands full as they tried to contain his fast little legs.

No matter. We had a great time - even if it was in our own distinct (and in someone's case, weird) way.

FINALLY... Christmas morning rolled around!!!! Here is a brief snapshot of what went down.

And yes, you see correctly. I got a real-deal, big-kid bike!! I loved it SO much and immediately promised that it would be my favorite toy for LIFE.

Until I got this. An awesome jet plane. See ya, bike. This is my new fave!

And you can imagine how things progressed when I got this camera...

Meanwhile, Sully could not be bothered to open hardly any gifts once he opened his beloved recorder. Who knows what Santa was thinking when he brought us us both one, plus harmonicas and kazoos! Our house, which was not quiet to begin with, is now constantly alive with beautiful songs. Or, if Sully is playing, just one note of a song --played over and over and over.

So once Christmas wrapped up, we still had plenty of things to do including watching some new movies that we received for gifts.

Do you have any idea how annoying it is to watch a movie with that jumping on the bed the entire time beside you? Oh yeah. It's pretty awful.

We have also spent a fair amount of time playing with bubbles.

Precious. Look at Sully just having the time of his life.

Oooohhh...scratch that.

Bubbles - 1. Sully - 0.

Meanwhile, I have been learning to ride my bike - sans training wheels!!

Things are going okay on this front, but it is definitely more difficult than originally anticipated. More on this later.

Ah yes... and here we are again with the face of stone. Only Sul can make something as exhilarating as riding a bike into a completely sober event.

Ah, well done, Peedles! After searching high and low, she found him the perfect ride-on (or -in) toy. A tiny box. Now that makes Sul smile.

So I am sure there is more to report, but I am gonna wrap it up for now. Until the next update (and I promise there will be a next), we wish you a peaceful (ignore Sul's double fisting) and silly New Year!

** See below for a quick update on our fall.