Merry Christmas!

The months have flown by and here we are at the end of the year and Christmas.  I have to admit that having three three year olds has been a challenge, but Santa found his way to our house.  We started reading The Elf on the Shelf a few weeks ago thinking it would curb some of the 'naughty' behavior, but it feels like they may have gotten worse.  We named our elf 'Herbie' and he found a new home every day but they're still at the age where we had to remind them to look around for him. 

The big gift to all the kids was the train table - which they all loved.  It was the first thing they all went to and kept going back to.  I have to admit it was an ordeal to get it.  It started with Black Friday online shopping where I bought a small train table from Toys R Us.  After about 2 weeks of waiting for it to arrive, I received an email that they cancelled my order and thanked me for being understanding.  Well, I wasn't very understanding and they ended up sending me another email that was for $40 off my next shopping trip.  In the next week or so they had a different train table on sale which was double the amount of the original one, but with the $40 off, I figured why not?  I thought it would be an easy order - I'd order it online and then pick it up in the store.  It took a little time and patience to find a store that had it in stock - or so I thought.  I thought that I'd be able to go to the store within a few days and pick it up and I ended up getting an email in a few days that said that the train table shipped from the warehouse to the store that I chose.  Wait, what?  shipped from the warehouse? Why would I have chosen a store 35 minutes from my house when there are at least 3 other ones closer if it was shipping from the warehouse???  I was annoyed and worried that I wouldn't get it in time and no one at Toys R Us seemed to care or have any explanation.  In the end, it arrived at the store on Tuesday afternoon and Tony was able to go and pick it up.  He had to wait because it was still on the truck when he got there, but we got it.  It took a few hours to set up on Christmas Eve, but seeing them play with it, made it all worth it. 

Here are some other pictures of Santa's loot piles for the kids...

It's funny to think about what they've told us they want from Santa... everytime we asked them  - Amelia would say she wants a purple present, Olivia wanted a pink present and Tony wanted a blue present.  I'll have to remind them of this when they're older and asking for iphones and and $300 game systems, and other things yet to be invented!

We spend Christmas morning at our house and then later on went to Tony's mom's house.   That can be in a Christmas part 2 post (after I get those pictures loaded).

Instead I'll share some pictures from our session at JC Penney.  I thought the pictures came out pretty well.  We decided to do the girls hair up (braided) since that's what they always want thanks to Frozen's Anna and Elsa.