Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve.

Today it was just the 6 Clarks.

We started the day off swimming and going down the water slides at Lifetime.

Then a couple of hours of downtime while mom wrapped and made final preparations.

Then we went to Tepanyaki, one of our favorites:



Here's the part where they toss shrimp in your mouth - here we are in action- we were 3 for 6:




I've never seen these kids eat so much in my life! I had my share too.

Next we went to the movies to see "Alvin and the Chipmunks." Of course, we had to have frozen Cokes and popcorn (even though we weren't one bit hungry) because Quinny insisted! Oh how she loves her "pop pop"

The movie was really good, but went later than we realized. Our plan was to take the kids to the shelter downtown and make a donation (the kids too) but we were starting to get anxious about the night ahead.

So we headed home, tracked down where Santa Claus was online (he was in Brazil at 8:30 pm), decided we had enough time to carry on our tradition of putting on our Christmas jammies and exchange gifts with each other. A month ago the kids drew names and each had a chance to go shopping and pick-out a gift for that sibling. They really enjoyed doing this and did a great job choosing a perfect gift.

Here they are, ready to open the first gift of Christmas:

Today was as close to perfect as you can get...

...until Sam started assembling the surprises and was up almost all night!