December 21: Christmas with Rachel

My family had planned on coming down and doing Christmas with us this weekend.  However...my mom has been really sick with severe bronchitis that was turning into pneumonia, and then on top of that, she had an allergic reaction to one of her [multiple] medicines.  Obviously, not a fun Christmas for her, and it meant that instead of coming to visit, she would be staying at home sick in bed, doped up on Benadryl and Zyrtec and a cocktail of antibiotics.  Luckily for us though, my sister still came to visit.  She brought us some presents from my family (which Gemma tore into with a vengeance - see hilarious video below) and we had a really good time.

Ethan had fun dunking all sorts of stuff in his new basketball goal: rubber ducks, Gemma's shoes, you know...the usual.

Gemma loves her new Periwinkle (Tinker Bell's sister) doll:

Both of the kids enjoyed playing with Ethan's new Laugh and Learn workbench together:

Gemma hugging her new stuffed Pete the Cat

Rachel and I kept ourselves in the Christmas spirit by watching multiple vampire movies over the weekend.  On Thursday night (after we nearly died at Zumba Toning), we ignored the massive windstorm raging outside and stayed up late watching Vamps, which was hilarious.  And then on Friday night, we finally got to go see Breaking Dawn, Part 2 (which was also hilarious, though not always intentionally).  I had found some absolutely hideous Twilight-inspired fabric online and made Rachel a purse and pillowcase out of it for Christmas, and she totally took the purse to the movie theater with us:

I felt so bad that my mom was so sick and we weren't able to see them for Christmas, but I was really glad my sister was still able to come down and spend a fun weekend with us.