Ready For A New Year

 Christmas arrived with the usual fanfare at the Two Little Monkeys house. 

We made our traditional breakfast casseroles in preparation for Christmas morning.. .

... set out the snacks for our guests... 

... cleaned the house (because Santa doesn't bring gifts to a dirty house you know)...

...and pulled up the Norad website to track Santa's progress.

 When the kids saw how close he was they quickly brushed and flossed their teeth and headed off to bed so the coast was clear for the big guy.  

Each year I sneak into the living room after Santa has stopped by (but before the kids get up) to capture a before photo.

This is what was left of the carrots, celery, milk and cookies...  I should have taken a before photo of this!  The plate was pilled high with veggies and the kids put out a to-go bag in case Rudolph didn't make the trip this year.  Amanda spent a half an hour writing all the reindeer names on the plate!  I just love these Monkeys!

The reason I always sneak in my before photos because the kids like to wake up early and preview their gifts before waking us up Christmas morning.  I'm very thankful that they slept in until 6:30 this year.  Some years we've been up at 4am with them!!!  This is what I came down the hallway to find...

This year Logan asked Santa for a giant Nerf gun and Amanda ask Santa to surprise her.  : )  Well surprise he did!  Among the other items, he brought us a super awesome cotton candy maker!  How cool!  We have been experimenting with different flavors and I am shocked at how little candy it takes to make a batch of cotton candy.  You melt one or two small pieces of hard candy in the machine... that's it!  All that fluffy goodness from two tiny pieces of candy.  Who knew!

Christmas morning in our house lasts all day.  The kids are never in a hurry to open all the presents.  They never have been.  They open one thing and play with it, try it on, or explore with it before moving on to another present.  One of the things Amanda got was this fun Fibber game where you "grow your nose" if you are caught fibbing.  As you can see by how long my nose was I got caught quite a bit!  : )

 Here are a few more random Christmas morning photos...

About noon time we had to take a break and head outside before all the snow melted away.  One of the things that Santa brought was these cool snow trackers.

 Dinosaur tracks for Logan,

 and bear for Amanda.

I think we finally opened the last present about 4:00 that afternoon.  

One of my gifts was a new tripod for my spotting scope.  Logan and I headed out to a local lake the following morning for some bird watching. 


 First bird he spotted was a bald eagle. 

 We also found this hawk eating a mallard duck out on the ice.

 We had a wonderful Mother / Son morning.

These past few days we've been hanging with family, playing games, and relaxing.   New Years Eve was a quiet affair, but this year the kids were determined to stay up... We watch the New York ball drop and did a Happy New Year celebration at 11:00.  Ten minutes later they were both asleep!

 Eric, my little night owl, even went to bed before midnight.  I was the only Monkey awake at 12:00 to enjoy the fireworks.