Opening Christmas Presents

It's been a quiet week since Christmas. As with any major event in our life, my health needs a long period of rest and recovery afterward. This is especially true after the long buildup to Christmas and Christmas Day celebrations. So, this week has been a quiet week of rest and recovery. Right now, I don't want to do anything else for the next three or four weeks... I'm tired and worn out!

There were a lot of great presents this year and a lot of happy expressions as gifts were opened which makes a photographer's job a whole lot easier!

I had some time to sort through well over 300 photos and found some from Christmas morning to share here... 

Here it is, in the wee hours of the morning, as we wait on Lukey and Kenzie... Sheila is chatting with Adam on Skype as I prepare breakfast...

Lukey was excited about this ferry boat with cars... the boat actually floats and can be used at the lake house!  And, this ferry sort of resembles the ferries we see crossing Lake Champlain all day, every day...

Polar Express robes... Lukey and Kenzie were excited about their new embroidered robes!

Lukey has been begging for an Amtrak train for years... now he has a nice Amtrak passenger train to drive... he was pretty happy and excited!!!

Showing Nan and Pop two of his new Amtrak trains...

Kenzie received a lot of accessories for her dollhouse. Here, she is looking at a wreath for the front door. She also received curtains, window boxes with flowers, paintings to hang on the walls, a tree and garden on the patio, working lights for each floor of the townhouse, and a new family of dolls. The old family of dolls didn't bend much so they couldn't sit, or do much of anything. I'll shoot more photos of the dollhouse soon...

A few months before Christmas, Sheila and I brought the kids to Toys R Us to see what toys interested each of them. Kenzie was drawn to the dress-up "Frozen" dresses... a light-up dress really captured her attention... she didn't even want to hang it back up on the display! As Gee coaxed her into placing the dress back on the rack, Kenzie softly held the dress to her face and whispered, "nobody buy you... I'll see you on Christmas..."

Hugging the dress and never letting go... contrary to the painfully annoying song, "LET IT GOOOOO, LET IT GOOOOOOO"...

Chatting with Uncle Adam who is on Skype...

Dress-up shoes to wear with her Anna and Elsa "Frozen" princess dresses...

For some reason, Kenzie is attracted to doll twins (sarcasm... there really is nothing unusual about a twin wanting a set of twin dolls)... this set of twin dolls, however, is the second set of doll twins she received this Christmas... the first set of twins was in the dollhouse family of dolls... for a total of four twins... she was excited!

Let's go play with my new Amtrak train...

(EDIT:  I forgot to add that this Amtrak locomotive arrived with no sound since they don't make one of these loaded with a sound circuit board and speaker. I spent a lot of hours researching how to upgrade this locomotive but couldn't find any useful info. I decided the just take the plunge and just come up with a plan of my own. I ordered an N-scale sound decoder and speaker since I wasn't sure I could fit anything larger... squeeze it into this cramped locomotive... build a speaker box... drill out holes for the sound to come out... and then program this new sound decoder with all the appropriate sounds. After a lot of work, this locomotive has some great sound! I should shoot some video of it sometime.)
It was a great Christmas morning... a lot of smiling faces... a lot of laughing... a lot of presents... and some good food for breakfast!