Thanks Santa!

Once again, Christmas came & went in the blink of an eye! McKenna & Zander had a great time making cookies for Santa & decorating the tree. The previous years they were still too little to partake in all of the festivities. Gagers managed to get into EVERYTHING, & the ornaments were no exception. I should have taken a before & after picture of our tree.

Before: Breakable ornaments hung delicately on the tree.

After: Broken ornaments thrown all over the ground.

We ended up having a tree that was bare for the first 3 feet that Gage could get his little hands on. The majority of the glass ornaments were taken down....at least the ones I was able to salvage, & replaced with Princess ornaments. There was no denying that a princess lived at the Bartel household.

I think that next year McKenna will have a tree of her own, seeing she has SO many princess ornaments of her very own.

The kids top 3 gifts :

McKenna: Barbie Townhouse, Kid Tough Digital Camera, Ariel Umbrella (which she actually used on Christmas because it was raining!)

Zander: Dinosaurs (& anything related), Box of Rocks (supposed to be a joke but he loved them!), Zhu-Zhu Pet

Gage: Huge bag of balls, Building Blocks, Playing with Daddy & his remote control helicopter.

Here's some pics from our Christmas Morning:

(Grandma Bartel made all the grand kids some PJ's)
Here's a pic of the "aftermath"....Jason putting the Barbie house together, while Gager's & McKenna helped out, Z playing with his Dinosaurs....& of course, me, taking pictures & videoing it all.

It's been really cold out lately, so we haven't been outside as much as we'd like to be. Yesterday it snowed the entire day (& previous night), so the kids & I went outside to play while Jason plowed the driveway. He plowed a path in the back yard to the swing set too. Snow suites made for a fun & fast ride down the slide!

Hopefully the weather will get at least tolerable to make a snow man....& I will post it then too!