For the past 4 years we've been spending our Christmases in Charlotte, North Carolina with Mike's family. This year we decided to stay close to home since it might be more difficult traveling with two, and to start some of our own family traditions with Ben and Sam. Ben was really excited about Christmas this year! He seemed to really get the idea of Santa and his reindeer. We had a little Elf named Red, who lived in our house during the month of December. He kept a close eye on whether Ben was naughty or nice. Ben would wake up every morning and go searching the house for Red, asking him about his travels back to the North Pole to see Santa. He was very sad to wake up yesterday morning, only to discover that Red had gone back to North Pole until next year.

Ben wouldn't wear his Mickey Mouse ears in Disneyland, but he busted them out to parade around the tree...go figure!

A friend of ours, Marc, was in-town visiting from Vietnam (where he's been living for the past 10 months). He shared our Christmas Eve and Christmas morning!

Petey!!!!

Uncle Mark, passing out gifts.

Can you find my dad? He's hidden behind the bag of garbage (one of four bags of trash...a little excessive????) What a MESS...

Playing with our new toys. Life is good.

The rest of the day was spent eating, eating, and then eating some more. Special Pancake for breakfast (a tradition in my family), hot dogs for lunch (a new tradition????), and turkey/cranberry enchiladas, which were delicious! I'm definitely going to have to make use of that gym membership!!! HA!

Happy Holidays!