December 17 Celebrating an early Christmas

Saturday Evening:  Emma and I invited her siblings over for an early Christmas celebration tonight. All of them said they were able to come, so I fixed some chicken-fried rice, French bread, and fruit and dip for dinner. After we ate, we opened presents and played games. Here are some of the pictures I took:

This is Ella. She and Chris have been together now for two years. I like Ella very much--the more I get to be with her, the more I like her. She is a nice person! Steady! Reliable! Hard-working! Sensible! NOT snarky. And along with all of those good things, she seems kind and caring. In the picture below, Ella is opening a gift from Emma. It is an ornament with her name on it and an accompanying Scripture. I liked it very much, and I think Ella did too.

I also had a small gift for Ella. I didn't have a good picture of her and Chris together, so I went to Facebook and "stole" a picture Diana had taken of them during the summer. I printed out that picture and put it in a frame for Ella. 

Here's Chris looking at the framed picture ...

I finally handed Kaity her gifts--both of which she picked out herself one night many weeks ago when we were browsing Amazon for ideas.

The little box contains the "Squishy" she ordered; however, both of us thought it would be bigger than this puny little one. !! I was so alarmed when I received it in the mail two weeks ago that I set about searching for another Squishy to augment this one.

Do you see the green one on the couch? I was able to get that one at Michael's for $3 (with a coupon), so it worked out fine; however, in the meantime, I had gone back to the Mall to find something for Kaity and got completely hoodwinked into another BAD deal! You see, I was walking by this kind of unique shop when I noticed in their window display these small-ish marionette puppets very cutely hooked up to some electronic device that made them all dance together. They looked SO cute, and I thought Kaity might enjoy having one. Bad thought. The marionettes for sale were in little plastic bags that were difficult to see inside of, but I picked one that was labeled "dog" thinking it would match the one I was looking at doing the cute dance in the window display.

It's a LONG story. But when I got "dog" home and opened up the plastic bag ... it really didn't look very much like a dog--it looked more like a wolf with a very elongated body, almost like a RAT. I showed it to Emma the other day and she promptly named it "Rat" and we decided to just keep it here to play with rather than give it to Kaity. Anyway, I got it out to show Matt and Chris and they hilariously played with "Rat" and "Charlie" (the purple bird) for awhile ... we were cracking up.

Actually, THEY were cracking up. I loved this so much. SO MUCH.

Here is Kaity opening her "Baby Alive" that actually grows from an infant to a toddler! I know! You might want to know HOW ON EARTH that happens. I was too busy doing other stuff to actually watch it happen. Ella was reading all of the instructions to Kaity: she was supposed to rock the baby and sing to her and then--voila' her little toddler legs would pop out some how ...

Here is baby all wrapped up and sleeping ...

They boys received the $$ they requested, which isn't very fun to open up--but it is what they asked for, so I complied. I have to get it through my thick head that these are NOT little kids any more ... they have grown up so much.

Game time was announced ... I'll post a few pictures of these guys playing JENGA in the next post.