Christmas #1...Mills River, NC

We have had a busy last week and a half, so I'm going to try to get caught up on here this week before more stuff happens that I will post about. So for today, I'll post pictures from Christmas #1. Since we knew we would be gone for Christmas and would not have enough room in our car for some bigger presents for our kids, we decided to have a Christmas celebration at home last Monday morning (it helped that Bob was off work also). Once the kids were up, fed, and dressed, we took them into the living room where we had rearranged the furniture and put out some wrapped presents for each of the kids. We had no idea how Addie would do with opening presents-last time she had a present to open, she didn't open it. But, apprently she learned about presents since then because she was all about ripping into them. We didn't even get a "before" picture of Addie with her unopened gifts:
Levi was very patient and waited for Addie to finish before he started the unwrapping process:

And here he is with his new stuff:

And Addie with her newly opened toys:

Addie also liked what Levi got:

We attempted a picture of the 2 kids together under the tree, but this picture was way better:

For those of you who haven't heard of a plasma car, it is awesome-fun for all ages. We thought Addie would take a little while to figure out the concept since it's not like any other toy she has riden, but she caught on the same day she got it (you can't tell in this picture, though). The child (or adult-Bob and I have both gone for a ride on it) puts their feet up on the car and uses his/her hand on the steering wheel and turns it back and forth quickly to make the car go. It's a lot of fun!

We braved the cold to take a ride in the wagon (notice the remains of our snowman in the background):

I'll try to update soon with pictures of going to see Santa as well as Christmas #2.