Sarah and Michal: A Tale of Five Christmasses

We are far, far behind on posting on this blog. In the case of Christmas, our laziness starts to look very prescient, as we just had our fifth (and, I think, final) Christmas last night when a box of gifts arrived. It was a very busy Christmas season which had us in both Atlanta and Cincinnati. Without further ado, presenting the five days of Christmas:

Christmas 0: Santa Photos at Red Apple

Christmas 1: Christmas Eve in Atlanta with the Bentleys

Theo made a train track out of Christmas presents, complete with a tunnel:

Vivian received pink butterfly wings with a pink tutu:

Another big hit was pretty much anything related to Daniel Tiger. Here's the trolley:

Theo received a simple Airbus airplane model as a stocking stuffer. It was incredibly exciting for him and he flew it around so much that we actually have almost no photos of it, except this one with him holding it.

After everyone went home and/or to bed, Sarah and I tried stuffing Xavier into a stocking (as we did with his siblings when they were babies). It was largely unsuccessful:

Christmas 2: Christmas Morning in Atlanta

The stack of presents was impressive:

Vivian, for scale:

Opening the stockings:

Afterwards we went outside to swing, but it was cold. With all the blankets, the kids almost fell asleep!

Xavier got presents too, and Theo and Vivian were very excited to help him open them:

Christmas 3: December 26th in Cincinnati

On the afternoon of Christmas day we flew up to Cincinnati for a brief two-day visit.

The letter mats were very fun!

Here's Vivian getting tucked in with the small subset of animals that we brought on the trip:

Theo got a vest:

Xavier looks forlorn at his siblings open his presents:

The coup d'etat was, however, the new LeapPad tablets!

Returning to Atlanta was exciting!

Back in Atlanta, we went to the Gift of Lights at the Atlanta Motor Speedway. Fundamentally you get to drive around the racetrack (slowly!) and look at light displays set up -- and you also drive through the access tunnels which are covered in lights!

We also took the kids to ride the Pink Pig. While it's "Atlanta's Christmas Tradition" I found it poorly organized and largely a disappointment.

We also went to downtown(ish) Atlanta and checked out the old fourth ward park, complete with super-fancy disk swings:

Playground at Senoia State Park:

Christmas 4: Seattle

The flight back went quite well; I sat in a row with Theo and Vivian and Sarah sat across the aisle with Xavier. A lot of horse-trading went into this seating arrangement, including calling Delta twice to get two seats in aisle 14 which we then traded on-plane to the folks on the aisles in the row with our other two seats. Fortunately we weren't too far back -- the back of the plane always sucks!