A Belated White Christmas

We have now had a week to come back to reality from the cruise, and what a week it has been! We flew back to Detroit on Monday in time to get a dusting of snow and a white Christmas morning.

The kids seemed pretty excited to be home, and they woke us up bright and early for presents on Christmas morning.

They don't seem all that excited, now do they?

In a house without a hearth, we improvise. Our stockings were hung by the front door with care. 

Opening gifts from Santa. Landon will have to get a rain check for his Batman-style grappling hook.

By the time Christmas morning turned into Christmas afternoon, Eliza had had a bath and wardrobe change and really seemed interested in getting Landon's goat.

Dinotrux is one of his favorite books, and believe it or not, he was actually excited to receive the sequel. He was just tired of having his picture taken.

Between Eliza, pictures, and the overstimulation of all the fun presents, this was as good a face as he was willing to give, until. . .

Monster Puppets! 

We got the real snow on the days after Christmas. We got all bundled up and built snow forts and threw snowballs and made snow angels. OK. That was fun. Anybody see flowers poking up through the ice yet?

After getting thoroughly frozen, it was time to come back in.

We have no pictures from the snow on Thursday because we were spending our time actually playing in it. We went from building snowmen to snow forts to igloos. The weather was a lot nicer (sun and no wind), and the snow was perfect!

Landon is such an interesting kid, and we’re constantly learning new things about what makes or doesn’t make him tick. We learned that the incentive of making Rice Krispies Treats trains was not enough to get Landon to help Hallie clean up the family room, so Mom and Dad got to make the trains after the kids went to bed.

He asks lots of questions about how things work and has determined that Mike is the source of all knowledge. Well, Mike, the Internet, and Netflix. Hallie showed him some segments of How It’s Made when Landon started asking some real doozies.

He and Owen finally were able to get together, and they had fun watching a movie, playing in the snow, and drinking hot chocolate.

Apparently they were pirates.

Booty galore

Eliza has become a little chatterbox since we got home. She wanted to talk on Hallie’s phone, so Grandma graciously accepted her call. The kid danced and ran around and occasionally spoke a few words. 

She has yet to learn how to dial anyone's number, but we suspect that milestone won't be too far off.