Merry Christmas

We had a great, quiet Christmas this year.  We spent Christmas Eve at the home of some friends we hadn't seen in two years (the "other Browns"), and got home so late we had to wake the kids up to put them in their Christmas Jammies.  Christmas morning we just hung out and opened presents, then had our traditional waffle breakfast.  Later we called family and watched "Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer".  
   
Among other things, Connor got a loom (he'd been asking for one since the County Fair), Legos, a Pillow Pet, and a vintage Transformer Dinobot (which Ryan found on ebay.)  Elise got a doll house, a scooter (to replace the one I backed over), a Pillow Pet, a pink tutu, and a huge creepy spider puppet.  She had been asking for a toy spider that could crawl on people, so the puppet seemed perfect.  When she opened it, however, she looked at it in a confused way until Connor shouted, "It's a spider!"  Then she threw it down and backed up, all freaked out.  It was awesome.  A minute or so later, she decided it was cool after all.  Evan . . well, Evan didn't really ask for anything, and he has soooo many hand-me-down toys, that I only got him a few small things.  He got a new stroller (okay, that's kind of for me), a baby squeaky toy, and a cute stuffed puppy.  He seemed content with the wrapping paper, honestly.  Ryan got a bike rack for the van, and I got a new computer desk that makes our living room seem much less like a college dorm (sorry, no pictures.)
    

The camera spent the night in the cold car, so this photo has a nice frosted look

Christmas Morning

I don't know what genius did the marketing for Pillow Pets, but every kid on Earth has one now.

Evan's First Present (wrapping paper was too complicated for him)

What's inside?

Opening . . .

Merry Christmas, Evs!

Christmas  afternoon we met up with a couple of our neighbors and went to the park.  Kinda weird for Christmas, right?  I mean, isn't it supposed to be too cold for that sort of thing?
    

We found a place where there were actually enough leaves to make a pile!

I miss the phase of my life before I discovered ugly yellow spiders.  Leaves weren't cool after that.

  
Anyway, we had fun, then went home to eat our Christmas Crab.  Nice cozy holiday.  
  

A day or two later, after the kids had been put to bed, Ryan and I were talking in our room and heard a strange noise.  Ryan went into the hallway, peeked into the bathroom, and saw this: