Christmas Cookies

Every year we decorate ginger bread cookies for our house elf and Santa (and always manage to sneak in a few bites for ourselves).

Happy Birthday, Lukas!

Lukas turned 6 today.

We celebrated with Breakfast Cupcakes, which is fast becoming a tradition.

Lukas Facts:

Lukas loves to sleep with his stuffed tiger, Raj
Lukas hates to wear long pants
Lukas just started playing video games (Ultimate Alliance and Lego Batman)
Lukas is a fast runner
Lukas is a really good smeller
Lukas loves any kind of seafood, and also asparagus
Lukas loves to snack on goldfish and green apples
Lukas drinks a cup of chocolate milk every night before bed (warmed up + 3 scoops)
Lukas has started saying "Dude" and No way!"
Lukas hates peanut butter
Lukas wants to be a soldier or the Nutcracker with the Frisco Ballet
Lukas loves to draw and uses my lightboard to trace my art
Lukas loves anything Ninjago
Lukas's favorite superheroes are Batman, Hawkeye, Captain America and Wolverine
Lukas loves the "Piggy and Elephant" books
Lukas's friends are Aiden, Gwen, John, Jack, Danny and Gavin
And he actually plays really well with Lennon (they like to stage battles with their toys)
Lukas is really good at school (when he puts his mind to it), but he especially excels at Math and Phonics
Lukas's favorite color is green
Lukas wants to be a policeman when he grows up (first I've heard that one)

Breakfast with Santa

Today we dressed the kids up and sent them off for sausages, pancakes, juice and a seat on an old guy's lap.

The Methodist Men always serve up a great breakfast with awesome service. 

We had gotten there really early, so the elf/kid ratio was something like 3 to 1. 

Lennon and Katharine had the longest lists, and Lukas's only ended up being around three items. He has offered up a lot of restraint this year, which makes it challenging when his birthday and Christmas are only ten days apart.

The big payoff picture was interesting, and I present it un-Photoshoped so that you can see it in its true glory.

Santa and Katharine are looking at the camera, but the four other kids are all checking out Iria off to the side (who must have been doing some pretty wild hand waving routine based on their expressions). Keira is playing the recurring role of "terrified kid", and either the print was off or they were using some Photoshop filter that made the film look like it was shot in the 70's.

But these are the pictures you always cherish, so they either need to come out really good or really strange to be truly memorable.

I shot a few more pictures afterwards because the kids actually did look really nice today, and I didn't want the above picture to be the only memory of it.

Blue Christmas

Iria pointed out that Kassidy is the only one of our baby girls who ever kept her hats and headbands on. Better take the photos while it lasts...

Squinkie Town

Katharine has been obsessed with these new toys called "Squinkies" as of late. 

It is this little squishy toy that comes in a small plastic bubble. They are quite collectible, at least in the sense that there are hundreds of these things and you can never  seem to catch up with all of the new ones that keep coming out. 

What's cool is that Katharine has been building an ever expanding town for them out of paper, and it keeps getting bigger and more elaborate. So if you buy any of these for your kids, skip the cheap plastic accessory pieces and just give them some paper, markers, tape, and scissors.

And don't call them slinkys or twinkies (she'll get mad... seriously).