Christmas, Part 1

First, I must warn you that there a a bunch of pictures, but then with me that is nothing new.

I can't believe that I didn't get a picture of our Christmas tree this year. It really is/was a pretty tree. I must do better next year a get a picture. Our original plan for Christmas was to celebrate Christmas day at home with our family and then go to TX and then TN. Well, at the last minute Barry found out that he couldn't be gone from work as long as we were planning to be gone. So since we saw Barry's parents at Thanksgiving and had not seen mine since August we went to TX and will be celebrating Christmas with the Brown's in February, when Caleb has an extended weekend from school. The kids are going to go through present withdrawal come March - they've only been opening presents since their birthdays in November.

Now on to the pics...

This is what Santa left for Hannah. She is very much into the Princess and Barbie thing right now. She has two Barbie movies and could watch them over and over all day long if we let her. Oh, an she was very specific about the Baby Born that she wanted. It had to be the swimming one. She was very happy with her gifts from Santa.

And Mr. Caleb was very pleased with his gifts from Santa, too. He is on a big Star Wars kick right now, so he thought the light saber was awesome. Oh, and at the last minute I thought it would be neat for us to all have some new Christmas pajamas. I was just able to find pajama pants for C, and then had to improvise with a t-shirt.When Hannah was getting PT and OT, it was very difficult for Caleb to understand why Hannah got to play and do all of these neat things, but he couldn't (however, the therapists were awesome and would include him). I had bought Barry and PS2 Pac-Man game a few years ago and pulled it out for Caleb to play during these therapy sessions. Well, he beat Pac-Man World 2 a few months ago and was able to find him and Pac-Man 1 for Christmas. He was super excited - can't you tell?One of Hannah's gifts was a set of Mrs. Pattycake's videos. She loves to sing and dance along with Mrs. Pattycakes. Oh, and how do you like her Christmas pajamas. They were a little big and I nearly didn't get her in them, but somehow I convinced her that they were okay to wear, even if they were a little big.
I couldn't pass up this shirt. If you enlarge it you will see why.
Another one that I just had to get.
Caleb and Darth Vader. For some reason he really likes Darth.
Opening some presents in TX.
Caleb digging in to his stocking - it's a big thing with the Dean's. You never know what you might find in you stocking - especially as you get older.
This year Hannah got quite a few "beauty" products - lip glosses, toe/fingernail polishes and bath fizzies. She is definitely a girly girly girl.
We we to my Aunt's house for more Christmas and all of the cousins that I grew up with now have kids of their own (pictured below). I was surprised at how crazy a group (5) of 2-6 year olds can get. How come I don't have that much energy any more??? There was one present at the party that was "wrapped" in a huge bag. After the gift was taken out of it, the kids had a blast getting in the bag and playing like they were the present.
Just a cute picture of C.

Hannah checking out Nana's tree.
We kept trying to get a picture of Hannah with Aunt Sarah, but H was not being very cooperative. You would think that we are trying to get her to eat a bug or something.
This was the best I cold get, and it's blurry. I guess the camera thought that I wanted a clear picture of the purse, and not the people.
I just thought this a a good picture of Caleb and Poppi.

Earlier in the pics I mentioned that Hannah was really into Barbie and one of the gifts was Santa was a Barbie from the movie. Well, Mom, I-I-I mean Aunt Sarah, found this awesome dress-up dress for Hannah that was exactly like her Barbie. As you can tell we was super excited. Admiring the dress.
It didn't take her long to get it on. The back view.
The front view. I think that she wore this the rest of the day.
Well, that's it for the first part of Christmas. Thanks Mom, Dad, Granny, Aunt Sarah, Uncle Russell for a great TX Christmas. Unfortunately we were not able to see Uncle Luke and Aunt Katie this trip, but I plan to see them more this summer. School starts back for C on the 7th and for me and H on the 8th. I am going to try to get back on the school bedtime schedule tonight. I don't think the going to bed part will be hard to re-start, it's going to be the getting up and gone by a little after 8:00 that;s going to be hard to do. Can't wait.

Happy New Year everyone. I hope that we all have a healthy and happy 2008. I can't wait to see what it will bring.

Birthdays, Playing and Randomness...oh, my

Long time no update, huh? Sorry about that. Things are good here Since I last posted we have celebrated 2 birthdays, our 14 year anniversary, 10 years in KS, Thanksgiving, and I think that's it. So I will now get to the important part - the pictures, of which there are a lot.

Take a good look at the taco sauce flavor. Caleb is definitely his father's son.

A close up of the sauce in case you couldn't tell what it was. Seriously he loves the stuff.
Caleb's birthday hat from school.
I asked Caleb what kind of cake he wanted, thinking he would say chocolate or something like that. Instead he said that he wanted a Pac-Man cake. I think I did a pretty good job.
We celebrated the big 6 at Chuckecheeze's.
Hannah and Autumn. If you enlarge the pic you can see how well Hannah fixed her hair that night. Caleb prepping to blow out the candle.
Smiling for all of his fans.
An now successfully blowing out the candle.
This is not a very good picture, but it was the best of the ones that I took. This is from Caleb's "Kindergarten Pow Wow". The kids put on a little program with several songs - they did a great job. Made me really want to get a video camera.

Caleb in his pilgrim outfit.

Would you believe that these next few pictures were taken on the Monday or Tuesday before Thanksgiving???
I do believe that she would wear a skirt ever day if she could.

The sweetest, right?
No, I think this is the sweetest.
Nope, maybe this is the sweetest.
This is Hannah's birthday cake. She wanted a Princess cake, but I couldn't do that so we went with the chocolate cake with pink icing. I had to buy food coloring for the first time. I may turn into a crafty mom after all.

Miss H with her cake and many presents. I was able to find a princess candle.
This was a yummy cake, fudge chocolate cake with a chocolate middle icing and the vanilla icing turned pink. The pink icing was a little tough for Barry to get past, he kept thinking it was going to taste like strawberries. He is so OCD!!!
Oh, I found the cookies at a craft store that begins with the letter "M". The cookies come baked with the icing and princess outline on the cookie and the you color in the picture with the food color markers. Very cool. We had a lot of fun doing this at McD's. Which is where H wanted to go for her b-day dinner.
Now, I just had to take a picture of this. Hannah put this ensemble together for church recently. I think the socks really make it, don't you?
I have been looking into getting a sewing machine and my mom found this one for me online.

I also found this bookshelf on the same online site.

Well, I guess that is about it for now. Oh, if I think about it again I will try to take some pictures of our Christmas decorations. Since I probably won't post again until after Christmas...Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. We love you all.