Gifts and Hand-me-downs

 Our kids have so much. I know that it is possibly too much at times, but they have been very blessed with gifts from others and also hand me downs. These holidays were no different.

Eliza absolutely loved having her beading box and being creative. She made bracelets, necklaces, rings.

Daniel played with his pool basketball game in the hallway.

Howie sent us a message asking if the kids would want us to have their old jumping castle. Oscar is too big for it now so they wondered if it could be fun for Alexander and the kids to have. We were keen. The kids loved having it set up! But it was so hot.

Jill kindly thought of us when putting out her kids old build-a-bears and we thought Eliza would love to have some more. We were right, although the boys also were keen to have a bear each too. They had a great time exploring the bears (and unicorn) and the clothes that came with them. Eliza was especially excited that there was a bride bear that she could dress up!

Alexander was keen to set up his telescope from Nana and Poppy. He wasn't quite grasping the concept that it would really only work at night so we did it in the day anyway. We managed to see over in Mary's garden a little bit more. It is a tricky thing to use when you can't shut one eye to look through the eye piece. But he will get there.

That night he woke to go to the toilet and we decided that we'd take the telescope outside for him to try and see some stars or the moon in the sky. We found the moon but will need to work on adjusting the vision because it was quite blurry. He was very tired so didn't want to sit while we fiddled with it. He was pretty happy to look in and see the blurry moon.

With some hotter days we also headed down to Judy's pool to play with some more of our Christmas presents. Daniel had fun trying to get some hoops while Eliza and Alexander enjoyed squirting each other in the pool.

Shooting hoops

Spraying

Eliza found it was fun to swim into Daniel's hoop and swim around in it. Daniel was upset about it until he realised that he and Alexander could try and spray her swimming around.

The little ones did get their revenge.

I loved seeing them work together though to help Daniel get the ball back after throwing it into the water. They did well to come up with the idea on their own.

Alexander and Eliza also had a lot of fun squirting the water into the air. And then again, it became a game to respond to Daniel's shots. If he scored a hoop, they would celebrate and shoot the water into the sky. If he missed they would squirt it straight into the water.

So the presents were good choices for Christmas (winner!) and the hand me down gifts were also perfect for a longer holiday at home.