The Schempers were in town for the holidays so we found a McDonald's with a play place about halfway between us and their grandparents house and met for breakfast one morning. These reunions are always so fun!

 After McDonald's, we were going to go to a nearby park, but it was raining so we found a mall in the area. The bad news was that it was an outdoor mall, the good news was that it had a big Barnes and Noble where the kids could play.

 The kids loved getting to hang out there.

 And the moms got to spend some more time chatting!

 After spending the morning with the Schempers, we drove fifteen minutes away to Andy's new office in Irvine. We were so excited to be able to see where Andy works, and we even got to have lunch with him in the Google café. I took some pictures, but Andy would rather I not share them. He doesn't know the rules about taking pictures of Google, and then posting them on the internet. Chances are it might be frowned upon. So, just imagine us taking a tour of all the cool places around the office and then having the most delicious lunch. Even though it's a long drive, we can't wait to go back and visit him again.

 After lunch, we drove straight to my parent's house for our "Krause Christmas." My brother and his fiancee, Christina flew into town the day before so we were all really excited to get to see them. Andy met us there after work.

Opening presents take two!

 Someone is excited about birthday donuts! It was the first thing she looked for when she woke up in the morning.

 She also really liked the "Happy Birthday" song!

 

 Yum!

 Hannah drew a picture of her and Ellie for Ellie's birthday. Ellie keeps opening it up to look at it.

Christmas Eve pictures...

 

The only kid excited about Christmas pictures.

 When we started getting ready for church Hannah said, "Joey is going to look SO cute in his glasses and Christmas clothes!" She was right!

 

And Christmas morning...

 

 

 

 The girls and their new bedspreads. After Christmas we are changing the kids' rooms so that the girls will be together, and Joey will have his own room. Grandma, Papa J and Great-Grandpa Hammond got them all the new bedding, pillows, blankets, and decorations for their new rooms. They (Grandma) did an amazing job!

 

 These were part of the new room decorations everyone got. Cuddly Frozen dolls for their beds.

 

  Showing Dad her new Frozen necklace. (And Octavian got a new toy!)

 Showing Dad her new Frozen necklace.

 

 Joey opening up the spy watch that Hannah got for him.

 

Amiibos for our Wii U. 

Poor Elle-Belles wasn't feeling great Christmas morning as she had just come down with a cold. After present time, she was all about vegging out and watching Dora's Christmas with her Frozen friends.

Now for a story: Two years ago Joey asked for an electric scooter for Christmas. The problem was, he asked for it about a week before Christmas after we had already gotten him all of his presents. Needless to say, he was a little disappointed that year.

Fast-forward to this year when he told me he wanted a $400 Crazy Cart. I told him that wasn't going to happen as it was way too expensive. But he had a plan--he was going to ask Santa for it since Santa could just make it and not worry about how much money it was. A week or so later he asked me if Santa was real (along with the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy). I told him the truth, and while he was THRILLED to be "in" on the big secret, that also meant his dreams of a Crazy Cart for Christmas were officially over. So, he decided to ask for something more reasonable--an electric scooter again. This time he asked with plenty of time before Christmas, so we were good to go.

Fast-forward again, this time to Christmas morning. When Joey first woke up, unbeknownst to us, he peeked outside at the back patio to see if a scooter was there (in the past, Santa has left bikes outside by the back door). No scooter. Then while we were opening presents, he snuck away to check for a scooter hidden in the garage. Again, he was disappointed. All morning, he never said a word about the scooter, so I figured he had forgotten about it in the excitement of all of his other presents. In actuality, he had secretly resigned himself to not getting a scooter (again) since there was none in sight.

Then, more than halfway through opening all the presents, he was reaching for a present, when he finally spied the scooter hidden behind the tree. He got so excited, he jumped into my lap and hugged me. He actually started tearing up, he was so overwhelmed. Of course, I started tearing up along with Andy and Grandma. I'm tearing up now just typing about it

Joey in my lap, wiping away tears goes down as my favorite Christmas moment of all time.

 Of course he had to try it out! He loved it!

What a wonderful Christmas!

 

 So this happened.

A few weeks ago Joey told me that he was having trouble seeing the board in class. When I mentioned it to Andy he said, "Oh yeah, he told me that too." I was really shocked that Andy hadn't told me, but then Andy said that Joey prefaced the whole conversation with, "I really want glasses!" It was hard to tell if we should take his complaints seriously.

Then a few nights later we were at basketball practice, and Joey didn't recognize his friend standing twenty feet away. It was then I knew we had to take him to the eye doctor. Thankfully Andy had just started his new job, so he signed up our whole family for vision insurance.

While I was driving Joey to his doctor's appointment last week, I told him that he was almost certainly going to get glasses, and he needed to do his best on the eye test so that they could get him the best glasses for his eyes. I was still a little concerned that his overwhelming desire to get glasses would affect his answers. My mom had visions of him purposely getting every question wrong, coming out of his eye test with a cane and a seeing eye dog, and the doctor saying, "Um, he's completely blind."

When he did come out of his eye test, he was absolutely beaming. I knew then that he for sure needed glasses. You've never seen a kid so thrilled to have failed an eye test.

We picked out frames right then and there and were told they would be ready in a week. Turns out it was pretty easy for us to agree on a pair of glasses. We went with Joey's first choice and my second choice, so both of us were happy.

Today we picked up his glasses, and he was thrilled. When we got outside, he loved looking at something without glasses, and then putting his glasses on and seeing the difference. He couldn't believe how clear a tree looked. Without his glasses he said the tree looked like a brown cloud on a pole. He said that now he can see 1,000 times better. He can't wait to go back to school and see the difference. For the past couple of weeks he's had to have the girls that sit next to him tell him what's on the board.

It looks like the gift of sight was an early Christmas present for Joey this year. Now he just needs his two front teeth!

Andy and Ellie did a lot of bonding while he was off of work for six weeks. They are so cute together!

This boy got all dressed up and handsome for his second grade music concert for school.

I hate to break it to the other parents, but he's clearly the most handsome boy in second grade! ;-)

I recruited this helper to unwrap kisses for Joey and Andy's favorite Christmas cookies. She did a great job, but then I noticed quite a few kisses had their tops missing with some incriminating teeth marks.

Joey is in chess club at school, and he's really enjoying it. Hannah is also starting to learn how to play using No Stress Chess (It's great, I highly recommend it).

Andy and the kids made an additional chess set using Legos so that Andy could play with both kids at the same time. Unfortunately for Joey, Andy is quite good at chess so Joey is making progress in learning to lose graciously. The chess board only got thrown across the room once! ;-)

An elderly member of our church lives at a retirement home, and a small group of families visited to go Christmas caroling. Ellie's Christmas tree dress was a big hit with several older ladies who had matching Christmas trees on their sweaters!

We had a "Movie Morning" with all of the neighborhood kids on the first day of Christmas break. We watched Jim Carrey's The Grinch, and ate popcorn. Fun and easy...my kind of party!

Every once in a while Hannah talks about the time we went to Urgent Care for her ear infection. Except she calls it "Agent Day Care" which actually sounds like "Asian Day Care." The first few times she called it that it took me a while to figure out what she was talking about.


When I find Ellie doing something she's not supposed to she says, "No! Don't see me!"


For our Christmas card this year, I just chose a random picture of our family from 2014. There was literally ONE good picture of the five of us. When Joey saw our Christmas card he said, "If I had known this was going to be our Christmas card, I would have worn something more handsome!"


Lately, when Ellie is upset about something she yells, "IT'S NOT MY JOB!!!" We have no idea where this came from (no one else in our family ever says that), and it never makes sense in the context of what she's upset about. Now Andy and I randomly shout it out. It's awfully cathartic. I guess that's why she says it.


Joey telling us some riddles...
Joey: Why is the Statue of Libery hollow?
Ellie: Because Jesus Christ is born.

Ever since we first started getting ready for Christmas this year, Ellie has made it abundantly clear that she does NOT want Santa to come to our house, and she does NOT want Santa to bring her presents. I'm not sure where this fear of Santa comes from, but it might be related to her former fear of beards. Or maybe she just thinks it's creepy that a stranger sneaks into your house in the middle of the night, and everyone is just okay with that. I get her point.

As usual, we planned to go visit "Knob Hill Santa" this year (he actually has a page on Yelp!). The whole day Ellie kept telling me, "I do NOT want to sit on his lap!" I reassured her that she did not have to, that I would hold her. I did finally get her to agree to talk to him as long as she didn't have to sit on his lap.

One of the reasons we love going to see Santa every year is to see the impressive, crazy amount of lights. We could never get a picture that would do it justice, but it is epic!

Ellie did fine as long as she was being held by either Andy or me.

She was a little nervous about going up to Santa, but she let me get fairly close.

Then when it was her turn, she just started shouting out her pre-rehearsed list at Santa: "a Dora backpack and Hello Kitty makeup (she copied that from Hannah's list).

Santa couldn't hear her, so he convinced her to stand closer to him. She actually did fine with that until he said he wanted to tell her a secret in her ear. That made her freak out a little. Even I thought that was a little creepy, but he just wanted to say something to her about bringing her candy.

It was fun to look back and see all of our years visiting Santa so far:

2009 Our first year. It was actually a different house/Santa than the other years.
2010 We didn't fit in a visit before our trip to Philadelphia for a wedding this year.
2011 This year started our run with the Knob Hill Santa.
2012
2013

These pictures are from our most recent trip to Legoland...

There were a bunch of cute Christmas decorations up so Ellie and I had fun finding some cute photo ops.

Ellie did not want to sit next to Santa, but she was okay if I sat with her.

We also hit our regular favorites.

We don't go on this ride very often because it usually has a long line. The day we went was pretty empty so we went on this ride about four times in a row without even getting off.

For some reason, she just loved it!

Our passes are going to expire next month, and we sure will miss going. We've had such a fun time at Legoland this past year!