Merry Christmas 2009

Yes, it has been a long time since I’ve updated my blog, but I wanted to share what Christmas was like for us this year.

Reagan is 6-1/2 (7 in Feb!) and Carter is 19 months, which is really the perfect age to discover the wonders of Christmas.

Our Christmas Tree, which is missing almost all of our ornaments, as Carter like taking them off the tree and throwing them on the kitchen floor to watch them break.

On Christmas Eve, we went to the 4pm Pageant service at my in-law’s church in Exeter. It was really well done and the whole family enjoyed the service, although I think everyone enjoyed watching Carter the most of all. During the service, he only wanted Nana (“Ninny”) or Grampa (“Bampa”) and kept jumping between the pews to get to one of them.  He loved the camel, which he called “doggie",” as every animal is either “Ella” or “doggie.”  He discovered that the giant black bow (she wore her Alice-in-Wonderland head band to church) in Reagan’s hair was a lot of fun to play with and it entertained Grampa at the same time.

He finally let me hold him at the end of the service, just as we were starting the candlelight portion.  Carter, of course, thought it was fun to try and blow my candle out (which he did) and then he thought he would touch it and discovered what “hot” actually meant.

Grampa and Nana came back to our house to spend the night and play the role of helper elves to Jeff and I.

The kids put on their new Christmas PJs,

Nana tried to read “Twas the Night Before Christmas” to the kids,

but Carter kept trying to get her to read the “Choo choo” book, about Thomas the Train, because there was nothing with any sort of wheels or tires or engines in the book Nana wanted to read…

Reagan put out the milk, cookies, and carrots for the reindeer,

which Carter thought looked good enough for him to eat too,

and off they went to dream of the toys that would magically appear the next morning, after 4 hours of wrapping by Santa’s elves.

Santa was a little smarter and trickier this year and he decided to wrap the doorway into the family room this year, which foiled Reagan’s plans of sneaking down early to unwrap her gifts without us.

  

But at least she got to break through a lot of wrapping paper.

Next we opened our stocking and the gifts from Santa,

Reagan wanted a gift from Santa this year, but she couldn’t tell any adults about it, which had me panicking, but he must’ve known what she wanted because she found this in her stocking:

 

then we ate breakfast (Crème Brulee French Toast, Sausage Egg Casserole, Fruit, Milk, OJ and lots of coffee for me),

opened some gifts,

 

I got to talk to my brother Matt for 40 minutes! (He’s in Honduras until June 2011) while Carter napped,

opened more gifts,

 

and more gifts,

put together some Geo Trax as fast as we could,

ate Christmas dinner (Beef Wellingtons, Baked Stuffed Shrimp, Mashed Potatoes, Raspberry Jell-O Salad, and a garden salad),

and had Carter finish opening his gifts around 5pm.

It was a long, fun day.