The rest of December

Tyler's family has a great tradition of having the family line up at what used to be the top of the stairs (which is now the bottom, since there are so many grand kids, who are all quite grand. I thought it was spelled 'grandkids', but my spell check keeps telling me to correct it. ANYWAY-)-The youngest goes first, who happened to be our lil' Sam this year. In this shot you see Tyler coaxing Sam to the top of the stairs, while simultaneously restraining sweet, energetic Elsie as she is now 3rd in line on the Christmas stairs. She did not like this line-up one bit.

 

 Until she was much closer to the top of the stairs, and was able to catch a glimpse of Santa's generosity. Please note that you can now see lil' Sam back to his proper place in line - which appears to be anywhere behind Elsie. Nice.

 Elsie was instantly distracted with the toy Santa brought for Sam. It is a race track that you can race 2 cars at a time on. She proceeded to push Sam out of the way each time he was even remotely close in order to highlight all of the wonderful "bells and whistles" for him.

 Elsie's 2nd most favorite gift of the season was this incredible magnifying glass. It is now nearing the end of April, and she continues to run around the house shouting, "Where's my telescope?!?" every time we head outside. She does love to look at things up close and magnified.

Here is Elsie's sweet, innocent cousin. Crying her eyes out because Elsie tried to get the cutlery back from the tea set Elsie received from Grandma & Papa. Eve was devastated, and could not be consoled. It was a good year to learn about sharing.

These last 3 are just a few of my favorite snapshots from Christmas 2011. If I knew how to link gentle Christmas music in the background to these next three, I would. But I don't, and I don't care to teach myself how simple this actually is just now. So, I invite you to mentally tune in to your favorite Christmas medley....now.

 

I love Christmas because I love family. 

Oh what a wonderful life.