Christmas

We had a wonderful Christmas this year. We've elected to stay home and spend some quiet time together as a family. Quiet is a relative term I suppose - lets just say we let the kids run around like mad and didn't worry too much about it. A few firsts this year:

1) Adam no longer believes in Santa Clause. He's been wondering about it for a couple of years and asking some very probing questions. We refused to offer any more than encouragement to solve the puzzle for himself. It finally came down to the fact that the he doesn't believe the tooth fairy is real, so that means that Santa cannot be real!

2) The girls were totally excited about Santa Clause this year for the first time. They made cookies and left out milk and talked about it all day. Adam was a good sport and played right along with them.

3) Ben was old enough to enjoy toys this year and had a ball with his gifts.

4) We ended up with a full size basketball hoop and a larger-than-life Anna doll in our great room (pictures below).

5) Collectively, we ended up with some 20 new books to read. Books are always welcome in our home! Among them was a very touching photo biography of my (deceased) father created by my mother. Thanks Mom! I was glad to have opened that one a couple of days before Christmas - otherwise I would have spent the whole day in tears.

We enjoyed time together on Christmas Eve with a nice big feast followed by an evening program. We continued a Finch family tradition by all opening a gift of brand new pajamas to wear for the night. In the spirit of an Ebbert family tradition, we dressed up and acted out the Christmas story. Then we sang some songs, watched some movies, and finally got the kids to bed.

After about 4 hours of assembling the basketball hoop and other toys, Tammy and I actually made it to bed before Santa showed up.

The morning was fun - with the usual chaos and fun of unwrapping. Following is a short movie of some of the unwrapping fun...


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After the morning, we got all dressed up and headed to church. We combined with a couple of other congregations in the area and had a shorter than normal late morning church. It was a nice service and enjoyable for me to actually be able to sit with my family at church (until Ben started crying that is)!

The rest of the day has been spent relaxing and enjoying watching the kids having fun. All-in-all it was a great Christmas! Thanks to the many of you that gave gifts and letters and cards to our family this year. We hope you all have had a very Merry Christmas!

The Aftermath

No need to comment on this one! 

The two princesses

Here's Anna all dressed up in her new ballerina outfit carrying around Lizzy's new pet cat (thanks Uncle Jeff and family!). Lizzy insisted on wearing the red Santa socks with her dress (only fitting for the day, I guess). 

Merry? Christmas

The whole Christmas thing was a little overwhelming to Lizzy, but she warmed up to the idea after a while and had a great day. 

Stocking Unstuffer

Ben's favorite part of the morning was pulling things from his stocking. He also enjoyed the toys pretty well. He had managed to get many of his unwrapped before Christmas, but enjoyed rediscoving them this morning. 

Hello Christmas!!

Here the kids are arriving first thing Christmas morning. I think their expressions in this picture reflect their true feelings of the morning. Adam - excited. Anna - overwhelmed. Lizzy - petrified (I don't really know why, she just seemed genuinely scared for the first 30 minutes or so this morning). 

Annalina the Ballerina

"And Anna was hung from the chimney with care, in hopes that Saint Nicholas soon would be there!"

Anna has been really wanting this ballerina outfit (although she really doesn't much like ballet - she certainly likes the clothing!). And, with many thanks to Hairy Grandpa and Grandma, she got it. We wanted to make sure it caught her eye first thing when she woke up in the morning, so we made a little "mannaquin". She was thrilled to find it. 

Christmas Eve

As part of our Christmas Eve celebration, the kids acted out the story of the nativity. The kids came up with their own costumes. Starring:

Little Benjamin as the wooly sheep.

Blue the dog as the three wise men.

Captain Big Mac as the innkeeper.

And Little Red Riding Hood as Mary with the babe.

Adam and basketball

Adam has enjoyed playing his first season of basketball this winter. He was a member of the "Snakes" basketball team for 1st and 2nd graders. It's been a great experience for him - he's really developed a lot of new skills playing on this team. He had a great time even though the team didn't do so well through most of the season - they lost their first 5 games - usually pretty badly. But during the last game of the season (yesterday), the whole team stepped up and pulled out a victory (38-30). Adam was the star of the game (in my opinion) - he scored 14 points, grabbed about 10 rebounds and had a couple of steals. He really was hustling around the court - and chasing after rebounds. At one point he even dove around another kid to save a rebound from going out of bounds - he ended up with skinned knees from that one, but was proud of his battle wounds.

The reason he scored so many points I think was not so much skill as brains - he figured out the system. You see, in first grade basketball, it is illegal to steal the ball while your opponent is dribbling - you can only steal passes. You also can't block shots. So every time Adam would get the ball, he would dribble kind of nonchalantly up to the basket, pick up the ball, focus and shoot it. It would go in most times. He figured out he could just keep dribbling forward and the opponent couldn't really stop him. Here are some pictures (and even a video) of Adam playing ball. These were taken two weeks ago...


Here's Adam on defense. He was real good at defense - he would stick with his guy no matter where he went - even if he ran past half court while the ball was under the basket. We'll have to work on keeping an eye both on his man and on the ball, but pretty good for starters!




Here he is defending again. Notice the seven footer on the left of the picture. This was the real reason Adam's team lost their first 5 games. Every one of the teams had a 2nd grader who had hit an early growth spurt. This particular team had 7 foot twins that got almost every rebound.


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Okay, so this video doesn't show Adam at his best, but it's still kind of fun. He's taking the ball down the court, dribbles it off the opponents foot. His coach kicks it back to him. He loses it again, but then grabs it and hands it to a teammate. Then he skips (literally) around and gets in perfect rebounding position - grabs the rebound and promptly throws up an airball - then runs back for defense.

Anna dancing!

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Anna and her class (and one other class)

Can you find Anna? Here she is with some of her classmates performing. 

Anna performing

Here she is right in the middle of one of her songs. What a fun day. 

Anna's preschool program

Anna just completed her first half of preschool this past friday. They had a fun program presentation for all the parents that day. Anna goes to preschool at the children's museum in town. It is an arts-based program so they do these incredible art projects. (That is one of the main reasons we chose this preschool for Anna). They have a kiln there in the building so they have made a few ceramic items, including a self portrait in clay. In addition to the art projects, they have dance once a week. This half of the year was ballet and starting in January it will be tap. Anyways, for their program they sang some cute little songs, but they also did some dances for us. They have been watching small segments of the nutcracker ballet in class once a week and they did a simple dance from the nutcracker suite. They danced to the Russian dance. It was a lot of fun. She has really enjoyed preschool, which has been quite a relief to us, since she initially was very resistive. She didn't love ballet though. She is looking forward to the change to tap. She was very nervous about performing in front of so many people. She was even in tears the night before, not wanting to go the next day. We talked her through it and put her teacher on alert to keep a special eye out for her, and she did it! We were so proud of her. We are hoping this preschool experience will make for a smoother transition to kindergarten next year.

Oh, I do have to mention as a little aside that the room mothers went a little crazy with the food for this little event. They had these two long tables filled with food. There were all sorts of ethnic foods made by some of the moms. We had food from the Phillipines (Lumpia), India (Samosa), Finland, fajitas wherever you want to say they are from, and a few others that I can't even remember. That doesn't include the regular cookies, punch, fruit kabobs, veggie tray. It was out of control!! But it was very yummy! They also had crafts for the kids to make and take home. It was crazy! What did I do to contribute you ask? I brought the veggie tray. That's about it. I also brought more kids than anyone else to enjoy the fun!!

We are so proud of Anna. We love her uniqueness. We love her desire to create beautiful things. We hope you enjoy some of the pictures of her at her program. We wish you could have seen her in person, but this will have to do.