Mewy Cwisthmas!

Since we traveled to Tennessee for Christmas, we talked Santa into coming to our house a little early, and Mimi and Mack were so glad he's such an understanding fella.

Clint and I thought long and hard about what types of gifts and how much we should spend on our children -- not just for this year but forever. While neither child will probably remember much about this Christmas, we still need to set their Santa Claus expectations, I think. Do we go all out and get them everything they want? Do we keep it simple? And what we decided was somewhere in the middle. But most importantly, we wanted to make sure there was a "wow" present, so we could get that super-excited Christmas morning reaction on video. And what exactly is a "wow" present for a two-year-old princess?

Why, a princess castle, of course.I'm so sad I didn't have another hand to hold my other camera with so I could get a video and photo of her coming down the stairs with Clint at the same time. Just picture a blonde fuzzy-headed thing with her eyes and mouth wide open gasping, "OH! WOW!!" Fun stuff.

We had a hard time pulling her away from the castle to see her other gifts. Clint kept explaining that there were other things, but she really didn't seem to care.

Until she saw this. Olivia the Pig characters. I think Santa found them for, like, almost nothing at Toys R Us, and she still plays with them every single day. We knew she'd love them because we're all big Olivia fans around here. She's such a sassy little pig just like another little child I know . . .Mack wasn't quite sure about what was going on, but I'll have to say that Santa was pretty sweet to him, too. We made sure that Santa knew he needed lots of boy toys -- no pink, no dolls, and absolutely nothing that could be confused with Mimi's toys. But of course that doesn't mean she can't play with them, too.
This was by far my favorite thing of his -- a really cool race track just for babies. We drop the cars at the top and they spin round and round in the middle with fun engine revving noises. But Mimi enjoys putting absolutely everything on the track, which definitely keeps Mack entertained.

The early Christmas may have to happen every year, and something tells me that the kiddos probably won't complain.