Merry Christmas!!!

Merry Christmas from the Pridgens!  Although, technically it is already Jan 2 of 2018 and yes, the usual story of being slow on my family updates :-P

So here is our "Christmas tree" for 2017.  A bit small I might say, but so glad the boys did not mind it at all.  It is actually Graham's succulent/tree that he picked out when we first moved here. It has tilted quite a bit since we got it:

We left Santa some milk and M&M chocolate icing shortbread cookies.  In return, a red wagon of gifts!!!

He did leave a few crumbs and the reindeer left bits of carrots as well:

It was nice that Bobby didn't have to work on Christmas eve and on Christmas itself.  We did let the boys open one present on Christmas eve.  Thank you Grandma and Pop-pop for matching Hess Trucks!

And on Christmas morning, we start with the Christmas socks.  No coals! Instead... pokemon cards!

 And as for gifts from Santa, some legos for Graham and a Pokemon book for Charlie:

They are both obviously really excited!

By the way, on a side note - Graham started sleeping with no shirt on since we moved here.  It was rather warm when we arrived at the end of summer and that seems to be his thing now. Funny!

The boys did get some lovely Roald Dahl t-shirts from our good friends in England.  Thank you!

Next, a quick breakfast.  Love being back in the US and having easy-bake biscuits for a lot less than what it would be in Abu Dhabi :-D

More gifts - this one from my sister's family - the Claw game, which is great except the noise from this thing is almost obnoxious!  Why do childrens' toys have to be so loud??? Anyway, I digress :-P

But Graham and Charlie are excited as we have mini chocolates from the Christmas socks and our good friend in Abu Dhabi also gave the boys Pokemon figurines, which are the perfect size for the Claw machine. Although we did need three "D" size batteries, which takes me another 4 days.  Haha...! In the meantime, the boys are patients and busy working on their Batman Bat Mobile:

Graham put the four wheels together and Charlie has been working on the body of the Bat Mobile. Unfortunately, I think Charlie missed a few steps as the parts are not quite lining up!  Looks like Mommy will have to step in this weekend:

But first, some pumpkin cheesecake pie.  YUMMMM!!!

I usually make this pie every Thanksgiving but didn't get to do it this year.  So I figured it would be a good tradition to start for Christmas :-)  I wasn't sure how well it would be with real pumpkin puree as we know how much sugar is in canned pumpkin.  Wait, I just looked it up.  1.5 cups would be 15g of sugar - that's almost 4 teaspoons of sugar.  Hmm... maybe not so bad??? I guess compared to how much maple syrup, butter, and brown sugar I had to use!
This pumpkin puree that I used by the way, is from the boys' pumpkin from Halloween.  So glad I had a Nutribullet blender handy!

And the pumpkin seed that was planted in November is now flowering too!  Will update on those later  :-)

Just so I know what Bobby gave me this year for Christmas, I will note that he bought me a very nice scarf and a nice pink shirt.  Although I have to bring the shirt back for a bigger size. You would think after almost 11 years of being married, he would know better.  This is going to cost him lunch too because the store is all the way in Manhattan Beach!  And as for Bobby, I bought him a "white noise" sound machine.  You are probably thinking what is that???!  I actually just came across it randomly while surfing the internet and that is exactly what it does. The machines produces different white noises. Right now it is set to something that sounds like you might be on an airplane.  It does take me a while to fall asleep but in the morning, I no longer hear our neighbor's squeaky faucet when he/she turns on the shower. Hooray!!!