Christmas 2010

Christmas really snuck up on me this year. Katie celebrated her fifth birthday December 12th at our house. Our home was transformed to a beautiful and mystical fairyland so we put decorating for Christmas temporarily on hold. Then, Ned traveled to the US from the 13th to 16th. We cut down our tree on the 19th which left us only 6 days to get ready for Christmas. Luckily the kids had off that entire week so we had a lot of fun decorating the house and baking cookies. Whew...it was a busy week before Christmas!

Santa found us in Holland

Andrew liked playing Santa this year. At first he just randomly opened gifts...not his gifts. Several. Then, once he got the concept of gift tags, he loved to say "Who this for?" Followed by, "OK, here ya go."

This package was for me. It wasn't nearly as heavy as it looks.

A memory foam from Ned. Now I can stop complaining about our uncomfortable bed.

The only thing Katie asked Santa for this year was a Playmobil Castle. A friend of hers has it and she also saw it in a catalog. It is all she could talk about for weeks. She had her heart set on it. And, when she opened it....WOW. She was happy. Katie does this tongue in cheek thing when she is excited/nervous/not sure what to do. The angle of the camera sort of captured it. She has done this since she was a toddler. She LOVED her castle.

We really don't watch much television with commercials. Mainly, because we don't watch local TV since it is in Dutch. But, the kids do like Dora in Dutch for some reason. One day while watching Dutch Dora, as we call it, Andrew saw a commercial for Dr. Bones Hot Wheels. He HAD to have it. We don't have any Hot Wheels and we struggled with what to get Andrew this year (because we have a house full of toys!) so a Hot Wheels Christmas it was.

His smile says it all

I took 8 shots to get this one picture in their matching PJ's.
At least they are both looking at the camera!

We started a tradition of making a Gingerbread House when Katie was a toddler. It wasn't a tradition Ned or I grew up doing but it was important to us to have some sort of Galka Family tradition each Christmas. Well, it has become a favorite thing for all of us to do! This year we did two houses, one for each child. (For those of you with more than one child, you know sometimes it is just easier to give their own) I love to look back at the houses and see how different they each were. The kids love the tradition of breaking it Christmas night. And, eating it of course!

This year we had friends over for Christmas dinner. Their kids are the exact ages of our kids. They all had fun breaking and eating the house.

Here are a few clips of the kids singing....

Santa got stuck up the Chimney by Katie and Jingle Bells by Andrew. Enjoy!