christmas morning

so, I had a few technical difficulties w/ my pictures from christmas. turns out, my iphone camera is not quite as fabulous as I first thought. it still takes great pictures in the church, and will definitely do better in a pinch, but from now on, I’ll be sticking with my point and shoot (until I get my REAL camera!) for daily stuff. first of all, a lot of the pictures came out blurry or grainy without the flash, and with it, there’s like this light aura thing going on that totally washes out the picture. (but don’t worry, I still love my phone!) then, when uploading and attempting to edit the pictures from my phone, I discovered that my computer or the picture files themselves, or both, don’t like each other. more than half of them were unable to be edited because of something to do with the file (I’m so techie!). so I did all the editing in picassa, but now I can’t figure out how to put them in this post FROM picassa, and since I really don’t care that much and don’t want to spend all day trying to figure it out, I’m just putting in the big collage I made from them that will go in the book.

stockings were first.

in micah’s was snow mittens, underwear, chalk, a card holder, glow in the dark silly putty, and a thomas the tank engine water color book.

in layla’s was snow gloves, a new barbie and ken outfit, erasers, glue sticks, chapsticks, and a rapunzel doll.

in shane’s was snow gloves, gum, erasers, underwear, soda flavored chapsticks, and a phone.

(a note on the phone: this is not a cell phone. when we switched our cable and internet to comcast recently, we got the ‘triple play’ deal that comes with a home phone line. well, we don’t actually own a house phone. we’ve only used cell phones for the last 6 years. well, now that shane is mr. preteen heartthrob, I’m getting all sorts of calls and and texts for him. we were going to just not plug a phone into our now active jack, but decided that we could have that be the number shane gives to his friends. so he got a plug into the wall, non-cordless phone! we’ll just have to remember to turn off the ringer in the evenings during the fall so we aren’t inundated by political calls.)

after that, they did their presents to each other. layla got shane the fuzzy earflap hat he wanted, and she got micah the movie ‘cars 2’. micah got layla a tin w/ hello kitty pez dispensers, and shane a glow in the dark hexbug nano. shane got micah a pair of fuzzy slippers and (the big event!) he got layla the ‘fur real friends’ walking, barking white dog! they were both SO excited about this gift. it was fun to see shane so worked up about the fact that he was giving someone a gift he knew they’d really like. he bought all the gifts and shopped himself, so this was totally him. and it lived up to his expectations because layla LOVED it!

layla got us a new butter dish and shane got us a bagel slicer (won’t have to be hauling bagels to my parents’ anymore!)

then the kids opened their gifts from us. each got a bedspread set and a lamp. sounds kinda lame, but the big thing is that they’re getting their rooms redone. lots of relatives were in on it, so various other accessories have been trickling in, with a few more to come from gramma and papa. we’ll be painting, and rearranging and completely redecorating both bedrooms, in stuff that is, more or less, of their choosing. (I had sneaky subtle ways of extracting this information.)

then it was on to pancakes and sausages for christmas breakfast, and to get ready to head to portland for christmas dinner w/ family.