Bling it On: It was Declared...

...to be the Best Christmas Ever, by Hope. I guess that means Santa determined she was on the nice list. :) More on that later...

First off, on Christmas Eve, she begged us to let her open the gifts she had received from the guys at Duck Dynasty.

Jep gave her an 8-pack of (mini) Sprite cans. I cracked up that it was in a "Hope's Cookies" box. Never heard of that brand before. LOL!

Then she opened a box with several boxes of Cheeze-its from Jase.

I believe Uncle Si wrapped up a box with a coon hat and a large pencil (from her toy room).

And Willie's gift (not pictured) was a hand puppet and stuffed animal (also from Hope's toy room). LOL! As you can image, Joe got several "DAD!" yells after each gift (in that sassy/annoyed sounding voice). You think she would have figured it out after he did the same thing to her last year.

We went to Christmas Eve services at Lutheran Church of Hope. It is so beautiful at the end when we all have our candles lit. The music was fantastic too. If you ever have a chance to come to a Christmas eve service, I recommend it.

Then when we got home, we quickly sprinkled the reindeer food out front...

...and left more snacks inside. One of the Santa Clause movies Santa tells one of the kids that the reindeer love red bell peppers. So we HAD to have some just for them and of course cookies for Santa.

And the BIG moment...Christmas morning. Hope came running into our room at 5 am (Joe and I didn't get to bed until 1am, so it was a short night). Of course she saw her Santa gifts on her way to our room and was pretty excited to get back out there and check out the camper (for her dolls).

The sledding saucer has already been put to good use today in the back yard.

She finally saw that the elephant had returned. She left him for Chippy (our elf) to take to Santa to be repaired and he was hand delivered by Santa back to Hope fixed and good as new.

We got Joe a new sweatshirt (from church).

And there are NO pictures of me on Christmas morning that I was willing to share. I woke up with a head cold and I looked SCARY. But I got some new drinking glasses, a drink dispenser (large one for family dinners) and a travel pillow that can also be converted to hold my i-pad. Santa also brought us extra robes for us (& guests, since we got 4 total) to wear when we go out and use the hot tub in the cold weather. Those will come in handy.

We were done unwrapping by 6 am and I was napping by 7 am. During our naps, Hope played with her Barbie (lego) set.

After we got a little more sleep we packed up and headed to Joe's side of the family. This year we decided to do a white elephant gift exchange. Joe kept getting his gift stolen from him and each time he picked another gift it ended up being more bath products. LOL! It was a lot of fun and now everyone can't wait until next year.

Then we let the kids and Grandma Karen open her gifts. Hope picked out this ornament, which has her name on it. She was about to bust waiting for Grandma to open it.

Hope is holding her stuffed animal dog that looks like our dog Reilly. Oh I miss that dog and can't wait for Spring so we can get a dog.

We drove home this morning and I went to work while Joe and Hope hung out at home. Hope's dolls went on a camping adventure and some friends showed up to go sledding in our back yard. I think she had a fun afternoon. Apparently she was too cold to bring in her sleds, so just a few minutes ago she finally went back out to get her sled (at the bottom of the hill). She decided she would do some sledding before coming in (in the dark of course). The neighbors probably think we are crazy.