Merry Chrimas Ebah!

We had a joy filled Christmas.

There is nothing like a child just figuring out Christmas and all it's glories to put some life into it. As parents we got to experience the bribery of the phrase, "Santa's watching you" and we will miss that tremendously. Last year that phrase just struck terror on her face (she wasn't thrilled with the idea of this big bearded fat man watching her and going into her living room).

This year, we even left him a cookie under the tree.

We had Grandpa Pugh, Uncle Nathan, and Aunt Christie even joined us from Scranton, Penn. They spent Christmas Eve with us, we had a nice dinner, then they left that night and we got some annual Christmas Eve dunglees and put Scout to bed. She was very excited about Santa coming and what he might leave. She came into our room at about 7:30 asking for some breakfast. I was kind of like, uh- wouldn't you like to see if Santa came? She retorted with one of the answers I had been giving her, "Santa is going to come to our house and bring presents". I was like, "I think he might have already came". She processed that for a few, and then her eyes lit up and she said, "let's go see what we got!!" She totally forgot! Then, as she saw the spread, she noticed the cookie was gone and she kept discussing that and ignoring the toys, I love Scout. The rest is history.

As you can probably guess from these examples, we COULD NOT get a normal picture of the bean. Chalk it up to Christmas Eve excitement.

We also forgot to have someone take a family picture before everyone took off, so this was the best we could do.

Scout made out like a bandit with a My Little Pony carnival, a robotic tiger cub (the hit of Christmas, his name is Wowee), a couple games, new crayons, etc. Mom and dad got a new flat screen (courtesy of Rob painting some dude's basement) a dvd player, dad got a new game and mom got a new rice cooker (my old one is acting weird. It's probably Mose, so the problem most likely will continue, since it has worked fine for years until we moved here.) My dad got me a set of folding chopsticks complete with a little pouch that can be put on your belt. He's funny. We spent the rest of the morning at Grandpa's opening more presents together. I got a book telling the story of a woman survivor of the Rwanda Holocaust (a little light reading). We also got a new motherboard hurray! We think it is getting installed tomorrow. Later that day, we tried to beat the storm (with success) and went to Sampan for some traditional Christmas day Chinese food. Sadly, I forgot my chopsticks.

I have to spend a minute telling you about Wowee. For weeks, Scout was a little tiger cub named Wowee and I just thought it was a name she came up with, and she was trying to say, "roaree". One day I happened upon a commercial for a little robot cub that meowed and purred and slept and growled by a company called "Wowee", and thus discovered what Scout had been obsessed with for weeks. I figured that would be an excellent gift from Santa. I benefited from the bad economy/waiting until the week of Christmas with a Target sale, selling them for half off. I got her the white tiger cub and boy that thing hasn't left her sight all week. It totally creeps Rob out, but I have to admit, it totally brings out my mothering instincts! It blinks it's eyes and purrs if you pet it's head or back. If you leave it alone for 5 minutes it goes to sleep and snores for a few minutes then, just keeps it's little eyes closed until you wake it up. I go into her room after she is asleep, and Wowee is tucked in next to her, both of them sound asleep and I have to give him a little love too, they are so cute sleeping together! I also can be seen giving it a little squeeze when she drops him in my lap to take care of him for a minute, while she does whatever she needs both hands to do. This morning they came into bed with me after Rob left and Scout became a Wowee lion cub and I got to be it's proud owner. She would fall asleep and prompt me to press her ear to wake her up. It was cute (and classic Scout).

Since we won't buy Scout a real animal, I told Rob that this is the least we can do, and he has to get over his fear of Wowee sneaking up to his bed at night and attacking him (his eyes make a little mechanical noise when they blink and that is mostly what haunts him).

Anyway, we had a very Merry Christmas and hope you all did too!