Merry Christmas You Crummy Building and Loan!

The title of this post has nothing to do with our Christmas celebration other than this was the first year I have seen It's a Wonderful Life. I don't know how I made it so long without having seen it! Best Christmas movie...(next to muppet Christmas carol). And come to find out my husband does an awesome Jimmy Stewart impression. Truly, a Christmas treat. This was our first year to have Christmas in our own home...and while I missed the suit cases, blow up beds and jet lag of year's past...it was a nice change of pace :)

Here is our little Christmas fairy. As you can tell, she received some dress up clothes from Santa. Off went the special Christmas jammies and on came the fairy costume. She's holding a gift from grandma Patsy and Grandpa Don. Great gift choice! That doll is awesome and she has some sweet outfits I'd like to borrow!

Woof! This is Brandon (if you can't tell it's him, it's because of his super sweet disguise) playing with some of Abby's dress up masks she received ...I think the glasses kind of give him away. Not a lot of nearly blind bull dogs out there.

Christmas morning. Pre-destruction. Pre-showers. Pre-sugar rush. Pre-sugar crash. Pre-the most desperately my carpet has ever needed a vacuum.

Abby's hand decorated cupcake to Santa. She also included some healthy treats for him (love that girl!). She wanted to put the plate in her room so that Santa would come in and see her...but then she thought about it and spent an hour before bed crying about a scary stranger coming into her house to eat her food. She'd only go to sleep after her dad put a note on the front door instructing Santa that he may leave the toys but he was not, under any conditions, to eat ALL of our food or to go into Abigail's room. She then made me hide all of the treats in our house so they wouldn't be eaten. This may sound extreme...but you guys should have seen our introduction to the Easter bunny. For those interested in what her dictated note (written before the hysterical portion of the evening) said, it is as follows: "Dear Santa, I want a barbie for Christmas. Where are you going to be? Are you getting close to us? We want to figure out when you will be in Las Vegas city where our house is. Can we see everything I told my mom I want to see? Rudolph, you, the sleigh? Santa, can you stay and talk a long time? Santa, come to our house soon, ok? Merry Christmas! Love, Abigail."

The cupcake decorating project.

The finished project...and let me tell you Santa loved them...and in fact, Santa is wondering why she bought new jeans before the holidays because Santa is having trouble getting them on.

Christmas eve we went to a cactus garden to see an AWESOME light display. It is Vegas...nothing says Vegas Christmas like a pancake cactus with twinkle lights... Well, maybe a bedazzled Santa flanked by showgirls...

She wanted to know if she could touch them. I made a Christmas commitment to try not to tell Abigail "no" more than 15 times in the 24 hour period. I nearly made it. If I count the "Maybe laters" and the "I'll think about its" and the "We will sees..." I didn't even come close to my goal!

My two sweet slices of Christmas cake! I can't imagine who I would want with me more to sing carols, drink the Abuelita with and to eat my clam chowder that somehow ended up tasting like vegetable soup. Merry Christmas! On to 2010!!!