Merry Christmas!

Christmas morning was a little bit different this year since it was on a Sunday! With church at 9am, we decided to have the kids open their gifts from Santa AFTER church, but wanted them to enjoy their stockings and bunk bed before getting dressed and ready.

Who needs breakfast when you’ve got candy!

Even though we missed the initial surprise (which you read in the last post) she was still pretty happy about her new bed! She’s been asking for a bunk bed for a while now, and is so excited to sleep on top!

Allie has been informed by Malia that she gets the bottom. Not yet though… first step: get them to sleep in the same room. We moved her crib into Malia’s room and finally have a guest room again! Tonight is only the third night. The first two went great… tonight, not so great. We sent Malia to her old bed in the guest room since Allie was being to loud and naughty. We’ll try again tomorrow!

Here’s our attempt at a family picture before church! Sucks… too bad.

Right after we got home we Skyped Nana and opened each other’s presents! It was actually pretty fun and thankfully our connection wasn’t too bad. Mom spoiled the girls of course! It was nice to feel close even though we were far away. Best part though… her Christmas present was a plane ticket for home! Guess when she comes? Saturday! Yay!!! It almost feels like a Christmas present to me!

We moved downstairs to open Santa gifts despite the fact that the girls were getting tired by now… but too bad! I love that they helped each other open them. It was so adorable!

After we completed all our shopping, Malia started to ask for things we hadn’t bought! So I planted the idea about how awesome a camera would be. Look who was super excited!

Allie was ecstatic over this Barbie!

I’m not going to show you all of their gifts, but Malia was too adorable with her new umbrella!

Oh and this new gem… a zhu zhu pet. Keeps her squealing and occupied for ever!

After a relaxing afternoon of playing with all our new toys we had some fun visitors! Ben and Maura came with their cute girls. Malia had fun reading to Merrilee!

And then we had a visit from Mike and Song and family! Afterwards we headed to the Brewer’s for fish dinner and a Christmas devotional.

Throughout the week we got together for various activities and dinners, but I neglected to take any more cousin pictures. Sad! But as soon as Song emails me the pictures from her awesome fancy camera I’ll post them. It was fun to see all the brothers and their families through out the week and are sad to say goodbye!

Here’s Malia saying goodbye to Merrilee today. (She’s much nicer than her grumpy sister Allie!)

Christmas Eve

We trade-off Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve every year, so this year was Aaron’s family’s turn! Funny enough, there were weren’t really any plans… Aaron had a lot of brothers in town, but they all seemed to have plans with their own in-laws and since everyone was waiting for Mike and Song’s arrival, they planned their Brewer Family get-together festivities on actual Christmas. Oh well… since we were free, we hung out with Adam and Kylie and their new baby William. He is so cute!

It was kind of nice to have a free evening because Santa gave us a few things we still had to work on! As soon as we got home we opened our traditional present before bed-time. Maybe when the kids get older we’ll try the whole wake-up in the middle of the night when Santa arrives… who knows. Both girls were pretty tired, so it was kind of a forced fun.

Such cute jammies and slippers!

After bed-time Santa’s elves got to work! We still had an entire bunk bed to put together. Ugh! Aaron had already put a few hours in the night before while in the garage, but even then, we spent an additional 6hours! Thankfully Adam and Kylie came over to help for a few hours, and just by chance Michael came by to spend the night and was able to help during the toughest part. See… we put the beds together down stairs because we didn’t want to wake the kids. Well, after an already irritating mishap with not following directions and losing pegs and screws that were later found in Aaron’s pockets, we still had to make the ascent into Malia’s room! Dumb. That was tough, and things just weren’t fitting. Thank goodness we had Mike’s muscles for this part.

Aside from removing the door, I’m not sure what else they did to get the beds in. I just disappeared and picked up all the garbage for while because they both seemed pretty irritated. We stayed up till 1:30am, and I was much too exhausted to finish making the beds, so here’s what they looked like, new bedding and all.

Sometime in the future we have plans of new paint and décor… but that’s the next time I have a burst of energy! We moved Malia into our bed during this transition in the hopes that we could catch her excitement Christmas morning. It’s too bad that she got up while we were busy taking our showers in preparation for church… she walks into our bathroom and was like “I woke up in your room. I couldn’t find my pillow-pet, so I looked in my room, and Santa brought me a bunk-bed. Hmmm.” Darn it! And she just said it so matter of fact. Oh well.

And… Here’s how Santa left our tree! (After taking this picture both Aaron and I were like “wow… all those small gifts look pathetic!” Haha. Well, that’s because someone forgot about the stash of big-boxed presents hidden in the closet. Oops. Guess we’ll save them for birthdays!)

T’was the WEEK before Christmas…

Our week before Christmas was so crazy and busy! Work was stressful for the both of us as the end of the year draws near, our whole family came down with the stomach flu, we disinfected and deep cleaned the whole house (carpet cleaning included) to prepare for visitors, we still had shopping left to accomplish, our kitchen sink broke and left a nasty mess of dishes in the bathroom, we had several dinner parties with family… and on top of all that we had to find time for wrapping and putting together Santa’s biggest present of all!!! So here it goes…

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On Monday night Malia had a cute Christmas program at her school. She’s in the front center in her black/zebra dress. It was fun to watch them sing and dance. (sorry the picture sucks… we mostly got video)

We had a lot of fun through out the month receiving numerous packages from Nana! The girls were excited when they could actually open one of their gifts! Nana sent them their traditional Christmas ornaments! On a funny note… by Christmas time, our poor tree was only decorated from the top half up. Allie just would NOT stop messing with the ornaments! Stinker…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Being Christmas time, we totally let the kids eat WAY too much candy. I was occupying Allie with a candy cane, and when she was done, it looked like a crime had been committed!

Not sure how she got it all over her face and in her eye… but this stink face is a common one around here. This girl has major attitude!

We had Laura over for dinner on Tuesday and had yummy ham, holiday potatoes, and a walnut/cracker pie… Peacock favorites! It was so nice of her to come up and celebrate with just us before heading off to Utah. When we asked Malia if she wanted to open her presents first, she exclaimed “No! Auntie Laura first!” I just thought that was so cute.

Malia’s turn!

I think this was possibly Malia’s most favorite Christmas present ever. A unicorn pillow pet! Sadly this poor unicorn ended up with a hole. When we went to exchange it they didn’t have any more unicorns, so instead Malia picked out a lady bug. Sometimes she’ll say she misses her unicorn, but… on a side note, her new lady bug pet matches her new bedding which you’ll see soon!

Allie’s turn!

We spent Wednesday and Thursday sick… blah. Neither of us could get time off of work, so left the kids with Uncle Mike. Such a blessing! Sadly he picked up the same disease in a worse form and was sick for a few days. Both girls were running at both ends, and our carpets were wreaking of vomit and poop. At least that’s how it smelled to me when I walked in after work on Thursday. I sent Michael home, called the neighbor for her carpet cleaner, and Aaron and I got to work! We did numerous loads of laundry, flipped mattresses, even went through and sanitized door handles, beds, stair railings… everything! I was so tired of the sickness! I think it worked because by Friday the kids (and myself) seemed to be feeling better, so we still went through with our Moikeha Christmas dinner on the eve of Christmas Eve. It was fun! We had terriyaki chicken, sushi, mac salad, opened presents, watched a movie, and ate some traditional midnight malasadas (it’s like a donut without the hole.) That’s something we used to do as kids in the middle of the night after Santa arrived and woke us up. Oh the memories…

I thought this was a cute picture of Malia and Uncle Brandon!

This is Uncle Mike’s fabulous wrapping job.

See that pout face? It really has become a regular these days.

Trying to open her present!

Allie took it upon herself to be on garbage duty. She would walk all the wrappings to the trash can. Super cute!

Enjoying presents from Papa!

Papa, Malia and Allie.

Sure love my siblings who are still here, but very much missing Jared and Zz (Nana too) all the way in New York!

Christmas Baking Tradition!

Laura and I seem to take turns on whose turn it is for a baking disaster. This year it was my turn! Nothing turned out right. My fudge crystalized and separated, my coconut balls fell apart when I dipped them in chocolate, and my sugar cookie dough didn’t chill long enough which left for a big gooey mess. Let’s just say that I hardly made any treat plates… so don’t be offended if you didn’t get one! But… at least Laura’s delicious molasses cookies dipped in white chocolate and peppermint turned out yummy!

Malia was great help! She even told us how much fun she had and what a great day it was. It was super sweet! Her little almost 4 year-old personality just cracks us up. Not sure when her clothes disappeared, but this is her usual ‘hang-out at home’ attire.

Only 7 more days till Christmas!

Christmas Ships

A patient gave me some awesome coupons to the Old Spaghetti Factory and we figured we’d try to eat downtown on the river and catch the ships while we were at it. Unfortunately reservations had to be made months in advance, so instead we scored an early dinner, and then stepped outside to catch the ships just in time. We sure were glad Auntie Laura could come too!

Sure made for a fun night!

Zoo lights!

We look forward to this adventure every year and it gets more and more fun as the girls get older!

We’ve been trying to take this gingerbread house picture every year. Here’s this year: 2011

2010

2009

(And I’m guessing we didn’t take Malia in 2008)

But look who ‘wanted’ to take a picture with this crazy lion! Preschool sure has been making her less and less shy. Good or Bad? Hmmm…