Since this afternoon and evening will be awfully busy with Christmas Eve church service followed by soup supper and celebrating at Grandma & Grandpa Harms's house, I am posting to the blog a little earlier today than usual. I wanted to make sure I got some pictures up since it's been a few posts since I put any!

Grandma & Papa let the kids open ONE present yesterday afternoon (after some convincing from Meggan perhaps), so that was fun! Meggan got a Barbie as the Island Princess toy with the little princesses sitting on elephants, so she's been playing and playing with that. Jordan got a little John Deere (what else is there?) truck that is mostly a sand toy, and he's been pushing that around too!

We've been enjoying our time at Grandma & Papa's house and are getting excited for Christmas to actually be here. Meggan has grasped hold of the concept of Christmas Eve leading into Christmas Day, Santa's arrival, etc., and she can hardly contain her excitement! Jordan is obviously carefree in regards to this, but he is most definitely enjoying catching up on some nice naps today after the long drive and not being able to get comfortable for a nice nap yesterday. He went to bed around 7:15 and woke up at 6:00, both Iowa time. That's pretty normal - he usually goes to bed between 8:00 and 8:30 at home and get up somewhere around 7:00 (we are on Eastern Daylight Time in Indiana and are 1 hour ahead of Iowa time! We woke him up after 2 1/2 hours this morning so that we could make sure he squeezed a second nap in before we will have to wake him up around 3:30 to get to church for the 4:00 service. Here is a picture of him melting down at about 7:00 last night (that's what no good naps will do to a 15-month-old that's used to sleeping away 5-6 hours a day) - poor thing!

Here are a couple pictures of them playing with all the toys at Grandma & Papa's house. Connie has every toy that Jason and Jared ever played with, I swear, and the kids love to play with them all. The first is them in the cradle and the second is them playing with all of Daddy and Uncle Jared's old Micro Machines!

Last night for supper Uncle Jared and his girlfriend, Sonny, and her two daughters came over (homemade lasagna - YUMMY!) and after that Connie had saved some of her Christmas cookies she made for them to decorate. The girls had fun doing this and especially with the sprinkles. This morning Meggan, Connie, and I attempted to put together a gingerbread house while Jordan was napping, but it was warped and the side weren't straight and didn't match up very well and, therefore, didn't stay together very well. We made it work and had lots of fun in the process, but we were pretty disgusted when MOUNDS of frosting wouldn't even hold it together! Aunt Crystal came over after work and had supper as well, bringing with her this Barbie nightgown/dress-up dress, which she wore starting last night until we were leaving for lunch today!

We went to Pizza Hut for the lunch buffet today, as is a rather "traditional" occurrence when we're in town, and then while Jordan laid down again Jason and Connie took Meggan outside to sled. It's so very cold and the wind is something else (plus she fell off at the very end) and so it only lasted about 10 minutes or so! She still had fun and was laughing at the end - with very cold cheeks!

Merry Christmas Eve to everyone and we'll try to put up another post tomorrow after the first round of toys comes piling in ... :)