Christmas time

This year we made a lot of gingerbread houses, but the first one was the best! Our friends the Mayer's invited us over and had homemade gingerbread and awesome royal icing...and tons of candy. Hattie totally got into it, but Anna was more interested in Lilly's Minnie Mouse toys. Sadly Paul was off interviewing somewhere so he missed the fun.

 One of my favorite Christmas treats to make are Paintbrush cookies. The girls loved painting (and often smashing) their cookies with egg yolks mixed with food coloring.

 And we were lucky enough to have Paul's parents, sister Christina, and brother Daniel out for Christmas. If you can't tell, the girls are sitting on Christina.

 An Iverson family tradition is to play a present exchange game on Christmas Eve. Everyone is given a word on a piece of paper...this word comes from whatever Christmas book we chose to read that night. And it's usually a pretty common word, like 'and' or 'he.' Every time your word is said you get to either take a present from the middle or steal one from someone else. The fun part is that even though you don't know what's inside, you fight and battle for what you suppose is the best present. This was the first year Hattie really understood how it worked and she loved switching presents. Anna, on the other hand, became possessive of one of the presents and refused to trade with anyone.

 The girls got Lion King toys while the rest of us got a movie or an iTunes card.

 My sister Lisa made these awesome costumes for us! Can't wait to use them every year! (nice pregnant wise man!)

 Paul, of course, loves to buy gifts and got the girls each a Nerf sword...and he got himself a mace and battleaxe! I was sure that the girls wouldn't really be into it, but I have been proven wrong. Whenever Dad walks in the room, Hattie runs to find her sword to do battle with Dad.

 Modeling her new Christmas attire...

 And Anna just walked around smiling all morning.

 And we had a yummy Christmas feast...on the 26th. Christmas was just too busy to cram in making a ton of food too, so we enjoyed it more the next day. Hope you all had a great Christmas too!