Merry Christmas 2011

Merry Christmas from the Luminati family. We're so excited to have spent our first Christmas in Germany. We only wish that we could have had some more family around to help celebrate. (maybe next year ... hint, hint). The girls are in their beautiful Christmas dresses. Hopefully we can re-brand them Valentines dresses to get another round of wear out of them.

More pictures of the girls in their Christmas dresses. It's a minor miracle to get them looking in the same general direction at the same time ... thank goodness for digital cameras where you don't have to pay for each picture you shoot waiting for that illusive simultanous glance at the camera.

Dancing together in front of the Christmas tree. Ellie was convinced that her pink Princess Aurora shoes were the right complement to the dress. She was also mortified to learn that we wouldn't let here wear them through the ice and snow on the way to Chistmas Eve service at church.

Here are the girls watching the Charlie Brown Christmas special. Mommy and Daddy are quite happy to have the excuse of "Christmas is over" to preclude any more viewings of this for the next eleven months.

Here's a look at our decorated tree with all those presents. Strangely enough most of the gifts were for the two smallest people. Not sure how that happened. Incidentally, the big present on the right is a whiteboard/easel for the girls. We haven't had any stray markers on the walls yet. I'm thinking we should keep track like signs they have out in front of a lot of military units that talk about the number of days since the last DUI, "It's been 4 days since the last dry erase marker on our white walls ..."

The girls waited semi-patiently for the gift opening to begin. We ended up letting them open all of their presents before Mom and Dad opened theirs. That way Mom and Dad actually got to look at some of their presents while they were opening them while the kinder were off playing with their new toys. For once there were so many new things that for a few minutes they weren't even fighting over who was playing with what.

Even though this was technically a gift for the girls, Mommy was very excited to see a copy of her favorite Veggie Tales episode ... a spoof on Star Trek where the gang all climbs aboad the USS Applepies. We watched this many times on our post-Christmas trip to France (more on that in the next post).

Proof that Daddy was actually there at Christmas, pictured with his new camera lens. Technically he picked this out himself, but Jen did suprise him with a new Kindle too. Now he doesn't have to carry 50 lbs of books with him when he travels (and Jen can take up all of the extra space on our bookshelves).

One present the girls loved was a CD player with some microphones to sing along. They've really never been that vocal about singing, but that has all changed now that they can actually hear themselves over the speakers. No one is ready for American Idol yet, but maybe in a few years.

We hope you had a great Christmas too. Post a comment and let us know how things went for you. More to come soon on our post-Christmas dash through France.