Christmas 2011

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Santa came to visit the Schoenfeld family party as he usually does.  He was awfully cute with the kids and let them ask him lots of questions like, "How do you get in our house if we don't have a chimney?"  He had Alyssa sit on his lap first and he mentioned to her that he got her letter at the first of the month.  She was really impressed by this.  She also informed me a few days before that he is the real Santa because he is not able to stay very long at Grandma and Grandpa's.  The real Santa is a busy guy and would not have the time to stay long like the Santa that was at school that week.  She wasn't sure what to ask Santa for, so this year she told him to surprise her.  Ian was pretty excited to sit on Santa's lap and he told him he wanted Lego Star Wars for the Wii.  He was also excited to remind Santa that one of his elves was living at our house.

I was really unsure how Andrew would do with Santa.  He's much more shy than the other two kids ever were at this age.  But at the same time, I had really seen him become aware of who Santa was over the past month and I thought there was a good chance that he might want to follow all the other kids' leads and sit on his lap too.  And that is exactly what happened.  After a few of them had their turns, he kept trying to get off my lap and go to Santa.  I kept telling him to wait until he called his name.  As soon as Santa called Andrew's name he eagerly walked up there and sat on his lap.  Santa was very cute with him and let him jingle his bells.

On Christmas Eve we rode FrontRunner down to Salt Lake.  After getting a bite to eat at the Gateway we rode Trax over to Temple Square to see the lights. It was really fun.  The kids loved riding the train and as usual, the lights were beautiful.  I also liked that we could go do something fun on Christmas Eve that also had a spiritual element to it too.

 

Christmas morning was busy.  Jason woke up around 1:00 am and started throwing up.  The kids all had the stomach flu earlier in the month.  Jason had it about a month before, so I thought I was the last one waiting to get it.  Knock on wood, I never did, and hopefully I still won't.  I don't know why Jason got it again, but as it turns out the virus that made him sick must have been passed around at his family party on Friday night because at least one member of all his brothers and sisters' families were sick, including his dad, mom and 92 year-old grandma.


We got up and saw what Santa brought and then got ready for church.  It was a nice service and as much as I didn't like having to have it at 9:00 am, I thought it was nice to go worship on this most sacred day.

Andrew was so funny.  I think because I had to wake him up he was kind of in a bad mood he didn't want to get off my lap at first.  But then he saw the kids checking out their new Christmas toys and then he realized the "Woody" doll and the bike were for him.  He was pretty excited once he sort of realized what was going on.

Alyssa and Ian got passes to Toads.  It is a family fun center with laser tag, go carts, miniature golf, and arcades.  They were super excited.

 Alyssa asked Santa to surprise her and she was definitely surprised.  She got a Nintendo DS and three games.  She had originally asked us if she could ask Santa for one.  But for various reasons we told her we didn't want her to do that.  But, luckily Santa was able to score this practically new DS and games from ksl.com, so she was really happy with her gift from Santa.

 Ian asked Santa for Lego Star Wars II for the Wii and Santa surprised him by getting Lego Star Wars III.  Yeah, I don't even think Santa realized there was a difference and that there was a II or a III.  But hey, Ian noticed and he was super happy.  This is him showing his new Star Wars book that Mom and Dad gave him.

Our dog Ollie all dressed up for the holiday.

Usually on Christmas afternoon we head down to my parents house.  But this year because of the time constraints we were under because of church we decided to get together with my family on Monday.  It turned out to be a good thing because with Jason being sick I'm not sure we would have been able to go anyway.

Instead, we stayed home and the kids played with their new toys.  I put off the nice turkey dinner I was going to make and we opted for canned chicken noodle soup instead.  Not my idea of Christmas dinner, but we were improvising.

Monday we went to my parents and the kids had a great time playing with their cousins.  We even got my dad to play Just Dance 3 and even more surprising is that he actually won!  It was fun for the kids to have Grandma and Grandpa playing this game with them.