Wii wish you a Merry Christmas

I realize this is very late getting up, but, frankly, so am I. I've been couch-ridden for the last few weeks after rupturing a disc in my back not once, but twice, around Christmas and New Year's. Oy. I can now tolerate sitting at the computer. Yay! Stay tuned for "The Day It Was Finally Easy to Dress Myself" and "Widen Your Stance: How I Relearned to Load My Dishwasher".

Here are some videos from Christmas morning. A big thank-you to faraway relatives who sent packages, especially for the kids. (Note, any intolerable camerawork is my fault. I forgot that while you can rotate the camera to take tall pictures rather than wide ones, rotating the camera to take a "tall" video just results in a sideways one. Sorry Mom and Dad!)

Christmas morning, Thomas coming downstairs to find what Santa left for him

A present from Thomas's cousin Matthew

A present from Sethie's cousin Jessica

A present from my parents

A present from Nate's parents

Presents to the kids from Gram and Grandpa Poulsen

Oh and the title for the post refers to the fact that we also got a Nintendo Wii for Christmas which is now providing many many hours of post-Christmas merriment (which saved me during my couch-ridden days from just staring slack-jawed at the TV. Instead I stared slack-jawed at the TV while repeatedly shaking the "Wii-mote"). I'll leave it to Nate, if he wishes, to post how he managed to secure a Wii during the crazy holiday shortages (Note: Interestingly enough, it was not from the Nintendo World Store in NYC, despite the fact Nate works a mere block away from there).

Sethie plays a mean boxing match on Wii Sports. If I can manage to capture it on video, I'll post that a little later.

A very late Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all!

Santa takes time out for the little guys...

A few weeks ago, Thomas wrote a letter to a Santa (well, he dictated and I wrote it). Here's a video I took of the event pre-posting.




In case you missed it, Thomas asks for "Geotrax with Eric", which is a new version of the Fisher-price electric train set we have and he also asks for two "Scoopadivos"*, which in the letter he explains are for both him and his little brother, which is bound to win him points with the big guy (can a four-year-old be that calculating?).

Well, we did in fact post his letter. A little while ago he asked me how we would know if Santa had gotten it and I said we would just have to assume the post office did their job and got it to him.

Well did they ever! Yesterday a letter came in the mail addressed to Thomas with the return address "North Pole". Here's a pic:

The letter is hand-written and says, "Dear Thomas, Santa got your letter at the North Pole and he knows how good you have been this year! Be sure to get to bed early on Christmas Eve...he'll be coming to your house! We've been so busy getting ready for the trip! Love, Santa's Elves and the Reindeer"

Thomas almost fell over with delight when he got to open this. Let me just say a very public thank you to Santa's elves and reindeer who took time out of their very busy schedules to make a little boy so happy.

*Thomas is famous in our house for inventing creative names for toys he loves. He currently has a Transformer here that broke, but he wouldn't let us throw it away. He determined the broken Transformer is known now as "Bedaton" (pronounced by him as "Bed-a-tahn"). He also has a small plastic rabbit he calls, "Rescue Apartment Bunny", presumably because it rescues apartments? "Scoopadivo" is his name for small Chubbies truck with a scoop on the back that he got when he turned 3. He lost this truck at the beach this summer and was absolutely devastated. We looked around local stores to see if they had any to replace it, but we haven't been able to find one. He's really hoping the big guy will come through for him Christmas morning.

They're coming for us!

Nate and I were making dinner last night when we heard a series of loud "pops". Now, most suburbanites would probably assume a backfiring car or some such, but of course, we thought they were gunshots. As they say, "You can take the people out of New York, but..."

Turns out someone was doing an enormous fireworks display somewhere very close to us. We could easily see the fireworks over the tops of our neighbor's trees. I took some pictures, but they turned out terrible because our motion-sensor light outside comes on if you so much as exhale in proximity to it, but it was very nice to stand out on the porch and watch the display.

Especially now that we know no one was trying to kill us.