a handful of hatchlings: The Main Event 2017

This year Hollie and Gavin worked together on a letter to Santa.

It was a good thing because we hadn't planned on taking them to visit Santa,

but during Hannah's Choir Concert he surprised us with a visit during intermission.

Gavin asked for a Lego set.

Hollie asked for a charging cord for her mp3 player.

Once we got home I found one for her,

so she didn't have to wait until Christmas.

Sometimes I like to spoil my kids like that.

Christmas Eve dinner: always a highlight.

After dinner we read the nativity and opened up Christmas Eve presents:

Hoodies all around.

Christmas Morning started at 5:45:

Gavin received his wished for Lego set, slippers and spinning CTR ring (that is already lost).

Santa brought Hollie ice skates and an Oonie craft activity.

She also spent a lot of time Christmas morning working

on the embroidery that Gavin gave her.

Santa brought Mark a couple of RC cars

Here he is putting his moccasins kit together,

he had both shoes done before night fall.

I wish I could have recorded Hannah's face when she opened her guitar.

It was the most rewarding smile ever! Grinning from ear to ear!

This year (actually every year), I'm awful at hiding gifts and she'd stumbled onto the case without even looking. But that's all she thought it was, a case.

When she went to retrieve it from under the tree Christmas morning, she was shocked at the weight of it. "Is there something in here?" she asked, incredulous. "Is there something in here?"

The smile just beginning to form. After playing on my old ratty-tatty guitar for the past year, we'd been encouraging her to spend some of her babysitting money on her own guitar and had taken her shopping a couple of times. But she was having a hard time deciding and actually even finding one in her price range that had all the features and sound she wanted. She'd had her eye on one, a little out of her budget (even on clearance) but when she went back, it had already been sold (to us!). We can be a little sneaky!

To see that pure delight on her face Christmas morning

might have been my favorite thing ever!

She also had fun playing with her new wax seal set.

She can get all old, old, old school on her correspondence now.

Hyrum is excited to try out his new Go-pro camera

But spent most of the morning "dorking" around with

his blowup blue man suit. Its funny the things that

strike his funny bone and make him happy.

This year, I was so, so, so excited to surprise Jotham with the Cowboy Duster (think Man from Snowy River coat) that he has secretly wanted since he was a kid. But just days after I purchased it, he asked me to review his Amazon shopping cart before he checked out. He'd done some of his own shopping and had put one in the cart. Wha...at??? So I had to spill the beans and was kind of disappointed. He wasn't though, the one I'd already purchased was nicer, but apparently in the wrong size. So Christmas morning was a little disappointing, since we are still waiting for the store to ship in the right one.

But we did manage to surprise him with a heavy-duty

french-fry cutter.