Awesome day!

So, I know Christmas is all about the Birth of Christ & I really appreciate that... but can I just take a moment and express my enjoyment with the *stuff* we got this year?! There's so much (even though we tried to do a "light" Christmas) I'm not even going to try to cover it all... but here's the highlights:

Dave's parents gave us a small keyboard (piano type) so the girls can begin to learn to play the piano.

Dave gave me an iPod nano - mostly to be used for homeschooling, since I have so many CDs of songs for the girls to learn... but I had no way to play them easily, so we never got around to using them... until now...

Dave also gave me a small speaker dock for the iPod so we can actually hear stuff. And I also got a grater/slicer/shredder attachment for my Kitchenaid mixer, and a new water bottle, and a new phone charger (since mine died a while ago).

We also got ourselves a new bench to go with our kitchen table, so we can now fit 7 people around our table. :)

(Photo courtesy of K)

K and D got a set of bunk beds to give the girls more space in their room, and C got a toddler bed so her mattress didn't have to be on the floor. I've been really excited for the new beds and convinced Dave to get them set up today.

Before:

After:

Look how much floor space there is now!!

What did I do to deserve this?

Seriously... will someone explain to me how I got twins that sleep 9 hours straight at night... every night! Twins that also take a mid-day nap from noon-4pm! Twins that are also growing so fast that I now can't carry both of them for more than a few minutes, and that are growing out of clothes faster than I can pull out the next size up!

Whatever I did... I want to remember it for the next baby... someone please figure it out and get back to me...

Gingerbread um... creations

Several years ago Lindsay & Mike decided to have a graham cracker gingerbread house contest. Somehow that evolved into our gingerbread "creation" contest... which wasn't so much of a contest this year... but it was fun anyway. Here are some pictures from this year's creations.

C's bare house (she kept eating the candy).
The "full" side of D's house, she used up most of the gummy bears & gumdrops.
The "empty" side of D's house... apparently she couldn't reach...
K's house... created with some help from Aunt Lindsay. D kept looking over at K's house and asking Aunt Lindsay to come help with her house.
My playground. So, I'm not very creative... but it was pretty tricky to get that swing to hang properly.
Mike's "house of horror". If you look really close (or click on the pic to see the full image), you can see the gummy worms coming out of the roof are actually eating gummy bears.
David's Pirate Ship scene (my brother). This was probably the most complex "creation" we had, which is why there are so many pictures of it. Notice the cannon on the deck of the surviving ship.
The wreckage of the yellow gummy bear ship. Notice one gummy bear clinging to some debris while sharks are circling...
There was also a sea monster nearby...
I insisted that the ship would not be complete without a crow's nest... so David humored me... the main sail/mast fell about 10 seconds after this picture was taken. :) Also, David explained that the red gummy bears were all mini-Davids... I guess that means the yellow bears were all mini-Mikes?

And, for the best creation of the night (at least in my opinion... maybe I'm a bit biased)...

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Drumroll please...
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Dave's Transformer!! You really do need to click on this one to get the full effect. Notice the candy cane fingers & gun... and also notice that the arms & hands are actually being supported by the shoulders... which are completely graham crackers & royal icing... pretty impressive engineering if you ask me. :)

We moved the transformer to the kitchen counter successfully, but K went to get a cup out of the lower cabinet and shook the counter enough that he fell over. Even after Dave's creation took a face-plant on the counter, he was still mostly in one piece... he just lost his head.