Christmas Celebration - With limited breaking and entering

Just as in homes all across the world, we experienced felonious breaking and entering this last week on Thursday night. This was the result:

This was the first Christmas that Rainer really understood what was going on. He really enjoyed himself and knew just what to do with those paper covered boxes. By the end of the day, he was the designated gift opener for Heidi and me because he enjoyed it so much.

By the way, some of these pictures are still shots taken from videos that I took. That's why they are a little blurry.

Mason and Amanda also knew what to do.

As you can hear on the video below, apparently each child had a theme this year for Christmas.

Rainer's theme was cars.

Amanda's theme was Littlest Pet Shop.

And Mason's theme was toys you have to build. I felt bad for him because we did not plan it that way, but he did not get any gifts that you could play with out of the box. He got an extremely nice Erector Set, which is tons of work. At the moment we are one page through six pages of instructions on building a helicopter.

He also got a SpaceWarp, which is a ball bearing roller coaster that, of course, you have to build. He also got a Build a Working Robot which seemed like a really good idea, until we tried to build it. Instead of screwing into the little plastic holes like they were supposed to, most of the screws would strip out and be worthless. We got it together enough to sort of make it work, but it was a disappointment.

I think Rainer is the best at expressing all of our joy this Christmas.

(this is his "Happy Dance")

But, of course, he enjoyed playing with the packaging more than the actual presents.

Heidi was able to get me a new digital camera, which is nice because I never really liked the camera we had. I always felt like the color was a little off. So the pictures on this post were taken with that camera.

I asked Linda to put together Heidi's present this year. She was kind enough to take care of that for me. I saw something similar to this at a client's house. I shot a couple pictures of it and emailed them to her. This is what she came up with, and I have to say, it turned out even better than I imagined it would. Thank you Linda. She also made one for her father, but changed the word 'Mother' to 'Sweetheart', because otherwise, that's just weird.

This year was kind of nice because my sister is a nurse and was working into the afternoon, so my family did not get together until the evening. That meant that for one of the few times since getting married, we were able to relax at home all morning. Amanda and Rainer got to enjoy their presents, and Mason, well, we've already talked about that. We even spent some time as a family in the jacuzzi outside.

About 1:30 we headed out to spend some time with Heidi's family and exchange gifts.

Here are all the cousins from Heidi's side of the family that were there that day.

Heidi's eldest sister and her family are moving to Alaska shortly because of work situations. This is Rachelle, Sharon Kaye (the one moving), Heidi, and Connie, checking out the house in Alaska that they are trying to buy. Google Earth is a wonderful thing.

After that, we went to my Mother's house for yet another gift exchange. Mason got a K'nex. Yet another toy to build. Unfortunately, most of the pictures I took there did not come out because the new camera did not think it needed to use the flash and I could not figure out how to force the flash, so they are all dim and blurry. I have this one though: here is Amanda proving yet again that the packaging is always more fun than the actual presents.

All in all, it was a wonderful Christmas. Wonderful presents, wonderful family, and wonderful friends. We are so grateful for this time of year and in particular we are grateful for the One who has given us reason to celebrate and rejoice.