Christmas Time is Here

We had a very nice and quiet Christmas this year. It was just us, which was kind of strange. The last two years we stayed at home and family visited us for Christmas. We figured when we moved into the parent's house we would see even more family, but not this year. We've decided it wasn't us--it was being 20 minutes from Disneyland!

We really missed seeing everyone, but enjoyed the time we had as just us. The front room floor remained covered with gifts, wrapping paper and boxes for almost a week because I didn't stress about cleaning, and Robert loved his Christmas Eve dinner of just appetizers because I didn't need to cook for anyone else. Here are some pictures from this past week:

Visting the Oakland temple:

Getting to open one present on Christmas Eve:This toy was as much fun for Robert as it was for Jarrett:Christmas morning:The hair's great:The smiles are even better:

The best part is they're even smiling for books:

Merry Christmas!

Have we mentioned?

We LOVE Disneyland!

We had to visit Disneyland at Christmas time, so we took a quick trip. This time we stayed at the Disneyland Hotel, which is another one of Danielle's (and perhaps Robert's?) dreams come true.

This was the view from our room:
Here's another great view:
We splurged again and went to Goofy's Cafe. We basically paid $15 for each kid to just have them eat a bowl of Fruit Loops, but we also got to meet some fun characters:
Afterwards we somehow got Danielle to go in a moving gondola on Mickey's Fun Wheel. She wasn't too thrilled:
Jarrett and Liesl had a great time, though:
I promise Liesl is smiling. Here she is smiling on the carousel:
This is her NOT smiling:
Cotton candy sticking to her fingers freaked her out a little. Other than that, we had a great time.

Cinderella

Danielle's dance studio performed Cinderella last night. She got to play the part of a mouse. Here she is before we left for the theater:
She did not like getting her hair and makeup done, which surprises me for how girly she is.

This is her performance:
She was so excited.

And curtain call: