Pre-Christmas Christmas

We started off our multi-day Christmas extravaganza with Philip driving down on Friday night and Linda and Ted driving down on Saturday morning. Saturday was spent shopping and playing with the twins (Pax was still getting over being sick). We had a huge breakfast on Sunday morning with a French Toast Bake (that was AH-MAZING, by the way), scrambled eggs, yogurt, and fruit.

Let' talk about the bake for a minute. It was sooo good. The night before, I cubed a loaf of sweet bread that was made with raisins, cranberries, and cinnamon.

I put the cubes in the baking dish and made a cream cheese-egg-milk-half-and-half-syrup-vanilla mixture to pour over top the bread cubes.

It was chilled in the fridge over night and then put in the oven the next morning for about an hour. When it came out, I covered it with syrup and powdered sugar.

So. Freaking. Good.

After breakfast, it was time for presents!

The twins were super-pumped about it all.

This was from Philip & Courtney- SO CUTE!

 Uncle Philip also got the twins an awesome fort building set.

While they both love all of their gifts, Vivi especially loves her Belle doll with matching dress for her and her Cinderella note pad. She also absolutely adores her Hello Kitty shirt, purple kitty leggings, and lime green outfit from Grandma.

Vivi also got these really cool magnet dolls. They come with all kinds of clothes and accessories that you can magnet onto the dolls. The twins and I have played with these several times, making up al kinds of scenarios for the little dolls along the way. These are so cool.

Gavin's fav gifts include his monster truck shirt, a new 8-pack of Hotwheels cars (shocker), and a totally awesome motorized race car track. This thing is amazing. And complicated to put together (in fact, it took Grandma 1-2 hours to complete it!). But once it was ready, boy was it fun! The twins have had TONS of fun with this one. The best part is that almost all of Gavin's matchbox cars work in it. And since he has 2,947 cars, he has no shortage of vehicles to try out on the track.

We went out for Chinese food Sunday night. Shockingly, Vivian was pretty good with chopsticks. Not shockingly, Gavin was not. Pax sat in a restaurant high chair for the first time that night.

Monday was a sick day, with Wes puking all day and the twins beginning their fever-coughing-stuffy-nose sickness. Yuck. 

Stay tuned for the post about our Christmas Day adventure...