Post-Christmas Bliss

Our after-Christmas holiday was wonderful!  Jed took two weeks of vacation over Christmas, so we all just lounged around and relished in being home together and playing with our new toys. :)
The Monday following Christmas, Jed got a really cool toy. His favorite toy ever.  A 50-inch Plasma TV.  He called it his "Betty" and the name stuck. So now we all call her "Betty," and Jed dotes on her.  :)
You can see the square, heavy TV that got replaced.  That thing was a beast. :)

The family is gathered around Betty.  "Wow, check out that sweet resolution."

Jed and Ben enjoyed blasting Ben's rocket. It could go up to 200 feet!  

Jed got his own dart gun for Christmas, so that he and Benjamin could have real dart gun wars together. (Lately they've discovered that it's really funny to stick a dart on Sammy's forehead and watch him move around with it stuck to him. So rude.)

Eliza feels like a million dollars in this picture. Can you tell she has her makeup smeared all over her cheeks, forehead, nose, and chin?  She's so cute!  (She sends a big thank you for her new makeup to her Aunt Amy and Uncle Matt!)

You never know what she'll be wearing at any one moment during the day. Between fairy wings, necklaces, crowns, high heels, and princess skirts, she has many options. :)  Here she is one morning with her Tinkerbell costume over her PJs.  She is taking a picture of me while I take a picture of her.  :)

Jed and I took Ben and Eliza to see Tangled in the theaters over the break.  We had already seen it on a date a few weeks before, but we liked it so much that we took the kids to see it too.  They loved it!  It was so fun! Jed said that it was one of the happiest daddy-moments he's had, having Eliza snuggled on his lap enchanted with the movie.  :) This was her first theater experience. She was so sweet the whole time. There was a man sitting next to them on the other side (and Jed and I actually know him because he goes to our church) and at one point he made a sniffle noise during a tender scene, and Eliza looked up at him and smiled at him until he looked down and saw her smiling at him. Then she turned to Jed and said, "I love that man." 

When we got home, we downloaded the soundtrack to Tangled and we were all obsessed with it for weeks. And still are.  All we get to listen to in the car is the Tangled soundtrack, per Eliza's requests. Yesterday Eliza wanted to play pretend that she was Rapunzel and I was the Queen all day long. When I get all excited that my long-lost princess daughter is back, she just bats her eyes and smiles sweetly at me. She doesn't talk much when she's pretending to a be a princess. :)  And if I start to sing the Rapunzel songs, she quickly says, "No, that's a Rapunzel song, and I'M Repunzel! Only I sing it!"  Then she'll start singing but forget a word and she'll stop and say, "WHAT??" to get me to help her with the next word. So funny! And she loves brushing her hair and keeps asking me, "Is my hair like Rapunzel's?"  :) 


One day over the Christmas break Sammy was trying to see inside the empty Puma box that Jed's new shoes came in, and he accidentally flipped it over on top of himself. He couldn't get out of it! It was so funny!  Being the cruel mother that I am, I grabbed the camera and took pictures of my trapped baby as he crawled around with the box stuck on his head.

It was so funny watching him trying to crawl away from the box, but dragging it around with him. hehe!  Don't worry, I saved him before he got too sad about it.  :)

Eliza got to watch her new Cinderella movie one day while Ben was at school.  She was so excited!

As for Benjamin, I told you that he got that Mosaic Mystery pattern block design activity for Christmas... This toy that I bought for 50 cents at a garage sale over the summer was the hit of Christmas! He loved (loves) it!  I knew this would be something he would enjoy. When he saw the booklet of designs, he immediately set to work on the first one, and when he was finished with it I took a picture of him with it.  I don't know why, but he got it in his head that I was going to take a picture of him with every single design. There are 56 designs. After every design, he has to get his picture taken. So far I have pictures of him with 36 different designs. I have to show you a smattering of these. They are so funny!  It just shows how obsessed he is with this activity game. The week after Christmas he would come downstairs as soon as he woke up to work on it. We left it on the kitchen table nonstop for the first few days because he would go work on it every few hours during the day. He is really good at things like this.  He is so cute!  :)

 after church

 early one morning

very early one morning

the Artist and his assistant