Christmas 2009

What a wonderful but crazy time of year. Christmas was so much fun this year with a 3 year old. Brody is just now starting to understand the real meaning of Christmas. We bought him his own nativity scene and as we explained each piece it was so sweet to hear him tell the story to others.
Brody of course is starting to understand about Santa which was very hard for me to not accidentally blow it since he can pick up on things pretty fast.

We got up about 7am & had to wake Brody up. I think Santa needs to start earlier in the month because he didn't get much sleep that night. When Brody came into the room his first words were "Santa did eat my cookies" so he was pretty excited. He then saw his"big white racecar & his little green racecar". He moved his big wheel out of the way to get to the cars. His cute words "this is just what I wanted" made the long night all worth it. He then saw the Handy Manny motorcycle & said the same thing. We were proud parents. These were the only 2 things he asked Santa for. He then sees the lightning mcqueen bike & says "I didn't want this". I guess Santa could have stopped with the first 2. He had to try & ride both the bike & big wheel however his legs are a little short for both but we still try.

This is an encyclopedia of Disney characters. Santa really didn't think he would love it as much as he does. Each page has a short story about the character - we have to read 2 or 3 every night - he would like for us to read the whole book.

We then moved to the stockings & he showed so much excitment. Trevor even had a few things in his stocking. I think brody's favorite was the buzz lightyear hat & water bottle. We started opening the presents - which for the longest time before Christmas Brody thought all the presents were from Santa so we had to quickly clarify. I was a novice mom and I wrapped up too many clothes so he quickly got bored with them & hit overload. We decided to go ahead & open mine & Jason's presents & save the rest of brody's gifts for later.

Mack from Lightning McQueen with all the cars from the movie. It's pretty cool and of course Brody loved it.

1 of about 6 puzzles he received for Christmas. He absolutely loves them and can do them by himself.

Doesn't Trevor look thrilled to be opening up some clothes?

Jason received clothes & a wii mini golf game. I received clothes as well (I haven't been shopping for normal clothes in over a year so my wardrobe desperately needed updating). He also got me a small camera which I was totally surprised. Our plan is for our present to each other to be a mac laptop. Our current laptop isn't going to make it much longer or the people in my address book are going to hate me if they get another virus type email.

We then headed to my mom and dad's for a late breakfast of french toast & bacon - Yum, Yum. We opened our presents from them and Brody got a scooter with a Lightning McQueen helment & knee pads - too cute.

This was one of the cutest pictures. NiNi and Papa gave him so binoculars and he had to take a look outside to see what he saw.

A perfect shirt for my dad - Mr. Fix It. He tries to fix everything.

This is a frame of Brody's 3 year old pictures - she's so excited even though she had already seen it.

Trevor ready to attack his new toy - or at least drool all over it.

Then it was back to our house to try and clean up the mess from earlier and get ready for Jason's family and my mom and dad to come over for early dinner. We usually go out to the beach for Christmas to be with Jason's mom but since the kids are here, we decided to have her come to us - about 9 people total. The catch was of course I was responsibile for the food. I could handle it except for green beans. For some reason I CANNOT make green beans. My grandmother used to try and tell me but I just can't seem to make it - they always taste terrible. So, I went the easy way out and bought a honey baked ham and everyone brought a side dish - the food was GREAT. It was nice to be able to use all my Christmas dishes for once.

Nana with 3 of the 4 grandkids.

We then opened presents which we have always taken turns but it was a little harder with a Brody and Cale wanting to open their presents, so we let them go first and then it was our turn.

Brody received an easel from Nana and Poppy - I sure hope the walls stay brown in the playroom.
Yes, this is at about 11:30 at night eating a ham sandwich

It was a great day but of course it always seems to go by so fast. My prayer is that my family and I will never forget the true meaning of why we celebrate this wonderful day. It can be so easy to get caught up in the whole buying presents but I want to slow down next year and enjoy the season and being with family.
One tired little boy.