Christmas was great. We spent Christmas Eve at the Ronald McDonald House. There was supposed to be a Christmas Cruise, but that fell through because of the weather, which had been CRAZY with lots of snow and ice!! So instead they still had a really nice dinner at the House. So we had dinner there and got a few things for the kids and ourselves. They handed out Santa hats, beanie babies for the kids, disposable cameras, special necklaces, and mini radios. Places had donated the items, like the cameras were from Bank of America and had there logo on it. They also had a few other things that were brought in. Both kids got one of the toy Chevron cars (the gas station) and Taryn got a stuffed Panda. They also both got $5 gift cards to McDonald's which we just recently used to get some Happy Meals : ). Anyways, Santa was supposed to come, but was running late because of the weather. Connor kept saying stuff about how he wouldn't be the real Santa and we told him you don't know that. Well part of the cruise is the committee buys each kid presents ($150 towards each child you have....I know CRAZY!!!). So after dinner and meeting Santa we went back to our room and there were presents for the kids, so we told Connor that must have been why Santa was late. They were ALL excited. Connor got a star wars video game for his DS, a star wars transformer and some clothes. Taryn got a play kitchen, some cats and some clothes. And BEST of all Aili got a motion sensor monitor (it will alarm if she stops breathing) and some clothes!!!! We were SOOO thankful for all of that, especially the monitor, which by the way we have been using and has gone off once when she got this strap on her wedge over her face! So after we did those presents we packed up, said hi to Aili and went back to Fort Lewis for the night. We spent the night down here and opened presents in the morning. The kids got a few presents from some family members and from people Clay works with, but the majority came from our 'Adoptive Family.' Fort Lewis has a program that you can enroll in if you qualify. We enrolled and our family was 'adopted' right away. We were adopted by the Washington State Liquor Control Board. We are SOOOO thankful for everyone that helped us out for Christmas. We made sure to take lots of pictures for everyone and the kids' faces were priceless. Connor got tons of Science related stuff, which he is loving and Taryn was in Kitty Cat heaven!!
I promise to everyone that I am working on Thank You's. I was just able to buy some cards and I am going to begin writing them as soon as I can. There have been lots of people that have helped us behind the scenes though. many people that Clay works with sent us meals, canned foods, and even chipped in some money to help out. I want to Thank them also!!! Everyone has been such a tremendous help and has really helped with keeping us as stress free as possible!
Anyways, here are some pictures from Christmas....
So how did we get SO many presents??? Well if you look at the left side of the tree, I think almost everyone one of those is from Connor's Great Grandparents. They thought that Connor wouldn't be getting a Christmas because of all that was going on this year and went ahead and sent him at least 20 presents!!! So we came home to this huge box full of gifts for him....boy were we surprised. They were also nice enough to send Taryn and Aili a present too, which we thought was very nice since they aren't related in anyway to the girls.
Opening their stockings
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