Christmas: St. Louis Style

I think traveling with 4 kids is difficult anyway you go about it. A long car ride is brutal but is traveling by plane really any better? Especially nowadays with super tight security, long lines, delays, etc...who wants to travel with 4 babies? Not me, I tell you. Plus, our babies HATE their carseats and any drive longer than 30 minutes usually turns into a screamfest (which I am convinced is some sort of birth defect, aren't babies suppose to LOVE their carseats? don't desperate parents everywhere put their kids in the car and drive around the block just to get them to sleep? for some reason our girls didn't get that memo). But when the Anderson fam decided to meet up in St. Louis this year for Christmas, we went against our better judgement and made the 10 hour drive anyway. We left at around 7pm the day after Christmas hoping that the kids would sleep if we drove through the night...not so much. The older kids mostly looked like this...Hanging out and quietly watching DVDs wasn't so bad. The babies pretty much took turns fussing the whole time though (i was just glad they never both got upset at the same time). Pair that with snowy/icy roads and both drives (there and back) were pretty much miserable. But once we got past that, the trip was fun. Our kiddos can't pass up a chance to spend some quality time with Grandma and Grandpa...

Grandpa & Ava

Grandma & Elsie

Kaydree had a specific request for "twin babies with hats" from Santa. Unfortunately, this request came after Santa had already bought all of her gifts and he wasn't about to go out and return them just to get those darn twin babies. Luckily, Grandma found out about the whole ordeal and was able to help Santa out a little (good thing too, I know we'd still be hearing about it otherwise).

Merilee & all the babies in their footie pajamas, I love this one of Carver too...

We were able to make it over to the gateway arch, but we didn't actually go up inside of it. Instead we just walked around the museum and afterward took a little tour of downtown St. Louis.

We also went to one of the coolest children's museums I have ever been to called the Magic House. Kaydree and Kelan took off and did a lot of the big kid stuff, while we took Carver and the girls around to some of the baby things (thanks for the photos, courtesy of Robyn and Nikki)...

We mostly just hung around at home... We had a good time singing in karaoke competitions... It looks like there are more than 2 sets of twins in the family too, check out how much Ryan and his sister Ansley look alike in this picture...

Here's the whole gang in our new Christmas outfits that Robyn coordinated. She had the hats custom made for the kids and they turned out really cute...Finally, the ladies did a little crafting. We made some cute beaded watch bands (aka: Bandersons) and we also painted these onesies thanks to Afton and her stenciling skills. We had this picture done of all the 2009 Anderson babies and I think it turned out super cute...We're hoping our 2 babies will be big enough for forward facing carseats the next time around, and with any luck that will do the trick and make car rides much easier. Either way, we are always up for a little adventure!

PS: This officially concludes my third and final Christmas post (phew). Now on to 2010!