Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

The holidays were a crazy busy time for the Ulmer family as Krysten enjoyed her second Christmas.

The festivities began on Christmas Eve when we went to early mass and then met our extended family at Maggiano's for dinner.

Krysten made friends with twin girls exactly her age at the table behind us while she was running around the room instead of eating her dinner. All the girls looked very pretty in their Christmas dresses.

Krysten and Mommy tried to take their own picture by one of the beautiful trees in the restaurant.

The next morning was the big day! Here is our tree (after Santa's visit) before Krysten got up for the day.

Once she woke up I wanted to capture her reaction to the presents on video ... here is what we got:

Krysten began taking toys inside her tent and playing right away and Santa really should have known better than to have Krysten's new tent all set-up for her because it was quite the challenge to get her interested in opening all her other gifts.

It was a long process, but eventually we got her to open all of her gifts, although she did have quite a bit of help from Mommy along the way.

One of Krysten's favorite gifts was her Tickle Me Elmo doll. Seeing as playing in a new tent and opening presents can be pretty exhausting, Krysten and Elmo relaxed on the couch and watched some TV before brunch.

Here is our little family all cleaned-up and ready to celebrate the day.

Later that morning, we were joined by Brad, Mary, Jeffrey and Brian for brunch. Jeffrey was looking quite cute in his reindeer sweater, although I couldn't get a smile out of him for the camera. Maybe it was because I was making everyone watch "A Christmas Story" on TV again.

After brunch it was over to Nana and Papa's house for the afternoon. This was our feeble attempt to get the kids to cooperate for a picture together in front of the tree.

And, of course, there were more presents to open.

Another of the day's highlights for Krysten was receiving her first Nemo doll (another favorite character).

Krysten had to check out Jeffrey's loot too (and stake her claim to half of Aunt Mary's lap of course).

This was just too cute to resist ... Jeffrey was playing with a Candy Cane that had been on one of his gifts and really didn't enjoy the feeling of the plastic wrapper in his mouth.

The day after Christmas it snowed all day, and the temperature was just right to bundle up and go out to play.

Although she does enjoy sledding, Krysten also insisted on playing on her slide.

On New Year's Eve we went to a party at our friends, Chad & Karyn's, house. Krysten and Sami tried on their party hats early in the evening just to be sure they would be ready at midnight.

Believe it or not, all of the kids made it to midnight. Here are Sami and Krysten having tons of fun with their noise makers around 11:58 p.m. ...

... and this literally was Krysten, down for the count, by 12:02 a.m.


On January 2nd, the Engfer's got together for our family Christmas celebration and Krysten hammed in up in front of the tree and the massive display of gifts (mostly for Krysten and Jeffrey) from Santa-Grandma.

Once again, she wasn't entirely interested in her gifts, but Krysten did take a moment to help Jeffrey with one of his.

Grandpa and his 2 favorite kids all got matching John Deere hats.

An Jeffrey showed off his fine motor skills when unwrapping a new toy

All-in-all our family had a wonderful holiday season. We hope you did too and send best wishes for the new year!