Yesterday, Elisabeth and Benjamin were playing in her crib and she grabbed the railing and stood up! She managed to stay up for a few minutes before she crashed, but she loved every minute of it! I helped her to get back up with better footing and she stood for much longer the second time until she eventually let go and took another crash landing. Today, she has her war-wounds on the side of her head, but she’s no worse for the wear. It’s so cute to see her standing there – she’s so dang tiny! Before I know it, she’ll be crawling around. Yikse!!!

We had a wonderful Christmas this year. We started the day by going to church and celebrating the birth of our Lord. It was a casual affair with kids in their PJ’s and most adults dressed in casual attire. Some of the ladies prepared ham rolls, cinnamon rolls, and coffee for breakfast and our preacher agreed to preach in his PJ’s if we had at least 201 in attendance. He was quite surprised that the final count for the morning was 230 people and we got quite the sermon – PJ’s and all!

Apparently, we were all “good” and got lots of fun toys! Benjamin was so excited that Santa ate his cookies and drank his milk. He really raked it in with a tricycle, a box of instruments, a big truck set, several books and lots of other great stuff! He had so much fun taking all of the stars (bows) off of the presents and wanted to open gifts for us all. Elisabeth was mostly pleased with the wrapping paper, but also loves her new books, her Roll Around toys, her cloth blocks and all of her other great new toys. She’s so happy to have new things that brother didn’t already break in! Scott’s face is baby-smooth after using his new BRAUN razor and he’s on cloud nine with his new Sirius Satellite Radio. He loves the NFL book that the kids got for him and the Journey concert DVD that Mom & Dad got for him. I had so much fun cooking Christmas dinner with my new pots and pans yesterday. It’s a “double” present for me, since I can now take my old cookware to our trailor when we get it all set up. We’ve also already listened to my new Kenny Chesney CD and Benjamin loves my new light bulb – Mom got me a gorgous hand-painted lamp. We all got so much that it’s impossible to mention everything! The best part was that we had so much fun spending the day together.

I think that both Scott & I are a little sad to see Christmas over and are dreading the “taking it all down and packing everything away” part. We’ll wait until Friday when Scott’s off again to do that. Until then, we’ll enjoy his day off today by doing as little as possible and eating as much as possible!

I can hear Santa on his way to visit us! Benjamin and Elisabeth left cookies and milk for Santa, and also put some reindeer food outside just in case! Check out the Christmas Photos in the gallery!

We’ll be adding more and more photos as we all open our presents!

Benjamin had to make another trip to the ER yesterday. He had trouble breathing and it was pretty scary there for awhile. The doctor gave him some Albuterol treatments and his pulse ox came back up to 100% from about 95% or so when we got there. We also got a home nebulizer kit and some Albuterol treatment, so if he has problems again we can treat him. The doctor thought it was just a cold and not something more severe, and he would probably need the breathing treatment to “get over the hump” of the cold. He’s doing great today!