Today is Christmas! The kids, of course, were very excited. I made them wait until I was ready to record a video of them coming downstairs. Here they are at the top of the stairs barely able to contain their excitement.
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care not to overfill them such that they would pull the stocking holders off the mantel, which is a concern every year. We did stockings first before moving to the presents.
Joshua's favorite gift was probably this Darth Vader costume. The helmet includes the ability to make it say things in the classic James Earl Jones voice like, "You don't know the power of the Dark Side." and "You have failed me for the last time." But you can also just turn on a voice modulator and talk while wearing it, and it will make your voice sound like Darth Vader.
We also got the kids some lightsabers, except instead of paying a ton of money or Star Wars branded ones (I saw them for $45 in some places), I bought "Space Swords" from Walmart for $4 each. They are really good, as they light up nicely and make lightsaber-like noises as you move them around.
Clara's main gift was this writing desk. We found vintage desks on Craigslist that had been refinished by some kids to raise money for something or other, so we got her the pink one. It's the old style of desk that's metal and has storage in the chair and in the desk itself. She was elated by this. She loves to draw and color and create, and this will give her a space in her room to do it. One of my main gifts was a compressor, which I wanted and needed, and is to the left of Clara.
Meghan's main gift was the priciest one, but the most necessary one too: a laptop. Her previous one is very old and is slow and overheats and blue screens a lot. I was concerned the hard drive was about to fail on it too. She uses it a lot, so it was time to get her a nicer, newer one. I replaced mine earlier this spring with the newest version of the Dell XPS 13, and I like it a lot. Meghan has zero interest in researching electronics, but I like it. I had asked her for her basic requirements and took it from there, and in the end, the best choice was in fact the one I had gotten, although hers has the newest Intel microarchitecture (Kaby Lake vs Skylake), which is something I'm totally interested in that bores her to tears. Hers is also a Rose Gold color, which lets us tell them apart at a glance, which is nice.
Clara had a bonus gift, which was fulfilling her recent desire/request to get a new pet. We are not getting any new dogs or cats anytime soon, but we decided a betta fish would be a good start. I recently went to PetSmart and bought all the equipment and the fish. There were a surprising amount of types and price points on bettas, but I bought the one I thought was by far the pretties, and conveniently he was in the lower tier or pricing. So meet our newest family member, Blue! Clara named him, I guess because he has some blue on him, but we didn't question it. She is super excited about him.
I tried to take a picture of the three kids in front of the tree while wearing their Christmas jammies, and despite dozens of pictures, I'm not sure I got a great one that just has them standing there, smiling, and looking at the camera in a classic posed picture. Instead, I got a lot of pictures of moderate disregard for my goals, but instead a lot of love and joy, as you can see here. And that's even better.
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