Christmas Vacation: Arizona

So.
Christmas this year, in case you didn't hear about it multiple times from everyone in my family, was a bit of a fever and vomit-filled catastrophe. Twelve of us had the flu within the span of one week, and it was all our fault. (Well...T's fault.)
We came, we infected everyone, we took over the house, my children cried all hours of the night, and they upset their cousins on a daily basis by not sharing anything at all ever.

Soooooooo methinks we are never getting invited back again.

Of course in between the toy stealing melt downs and the chugging of tylenol, the girls did manage to sometimes play together nicely. (OK, I'm slightly exaggerating, they had a ball, please move back East soon, k thanks)

I have no idea who took this picture, where (or what???) these gigantic bones came from, or why they are holding them, so obviously you can tell I was really good at looking after my children.

We took the girls down the street to look at the goats and emus in the neighbor's yard. (For reals. My mom's neighborhood is very rural.) And H freaked out. This was possibly her favorite thing we did for the entire two weeks we were there. Even Christmas morning paled in comparison.

We did manage to squeeze in a few Christmassy activities, like making cookies.

And decorating cookies. (And eating cookies, obvs.)

And if you have a toddler, don't be like me and tell them to put some sprinkles on their cookie and then look away. It was just a very bad idea.

And my goodness, did the girls get a ton o' presents this year. They have some generous grandparents. This doesn't even show what they got from Seth's and my Dad's side of the family. It's a little bit ridiculous.
(It is tradition in Seth's family to take a picture of the kid with their presents, if you are at all confused like I was when Seth first set this up.)

T probably could have gotten that one tube of M&M's and been perfectly happy. We made the mistake of giving it to her first thing in her stocking, and she then got very upset when we tried to take it from her so she could open her presents.
We're terrible parents, her life is so hard, etc. etc.

Next year I've decided I'm just going to get them stocking stuffers, since H's favorite gift was also out of her stocking, these little egg shakers. Please ignore the snot. (If you can...there's a lot.)

So Merry Christmas! And to my Arizona family: see you in about ten years when we're ready to brave flying cross-country again.
Hopefully we won't infect everyone that time.

But I make no guarantees.