USC Girl Transformers and Chuckie Dolls

For Christmas, KC asked Santa for a "USC Girl Transformer."  This describes her so well. She loves sports and "boy" toys, yet girlie things as well. (For the record, Santa was unable to fulfill this request. Although I think I should invent a girl transformer, maybe a cute modern VW bug?).  I finally gave in to the girlieness this year and KC received numerous princesses for Christmas.  One of the princesses was an Ariel singing in the bathtub doll. The other night, at about 3am, I heard "Hi, do you want to play?" and a little later "Goodbye." I had no clue what it was. I woke up RJ and made him check the house.... Yeah, I've watched CSI too many times and in my mind there was a serial killer in the house who wakes people up using toy dolls. We figured out the next morning that it was the Ariel doll (she said the same thing to RJ when he got up and was taking a shower). So now I call her the Chuckie doll.

CJ received Transformers for Christmas. How crazy is it that the toys I played with 25+ years ago are popular again?

The baby, JG, could care less about her presents. She wanted to play with all the twins princesses and transformers (spent the day stealing them from the twins). In the photo she is wondering who took the stuff from her stocking.

Now time to brag- the twins woke up Christmas morning and went quietly to the living room and turned on cartoons. They didn't come wake us up so they could open presents, but let us sleep in. I finally went out there (I wasn't sleeping anyways), and the FIRST thing they said was "Santa forgot to fill your stocking!" Now, it isn't Santa's fault. We bought stocking stuffers for the kids and I didn't tell RJ that I bought stuff for his stocking (we normally don't exchange gifts). Rather than asking to open presents, the twins wanted to go shopping and buy me presents because they were so sad for me (KC said she was going to buy me a USC dress and USC shoes).  RJ came out awhile later and we let the twins open their stockings but said we couldn't open the rest of the presents until JG woke up. They were completely fine with that. Seriously? Whose kids are these? I wanted them to open their presents so after another hour I went in and woke up the baby.

The twins spent the day out by the pool playing with their new toys- one of the advantages of living in Southern California. What a wonderful Christmas!