Christmas Morning

This was a wonderful Christmas for us! It was made even more fun by the fact that every time Craig would see a nativity or a picture of Christ he would say "Jesus!". He's getting better and better at talking all the time and true to his character is a big ham.

This is our Christmas tree the day that we got and decorated it...
And this is on Christmas morning... It's looking very worn out from all that standing around and holding up lights and ornaments. I don't know how much longer it will last.
Craig was having trouble sleeping on Christmas eve. (Not so much from anticipation I'm sure... more from diaper rash). So when he woke up with no intention of going back to sleep at 1:30 in the morning, we decided that maybe we should just go ahead and have Christmas morning.

We opened one or 2 presents but he was pretty miserable and even the lion and panda bear that he opened were not enough to get his mind off of it. We finally got him to sleep again and now wide awake ourselves tried to do the same.

He woke again around 6 so we went and got him for the real deal this time... But as soon as I picked him up he fell asleep in my arms. We started opening our presents and waited for him to wake up. It took longer then I ever would have guessed. But when he did open his eyes and try to figure out what was going on, before he had even become coherent, he saw the little snowman poking out the top of his stocking and threw his hands above his head saying "tall, tall, tall!"

This picture is seriously 15 seconds after opening his eyes!

He didn't let go of it for a long time!
We got him several little toy animal to go along with the sounds that he's always making. This was the first one he opened and it delighted him.

Hippo!
Many things may come and go but Hippo stays the same!

A brilliant way to have fun drawing and yet not have to be under constant supervision because of a dangerous crayon threatening everything below 3ft in the house.

Trying it out properly

Then we went out to Hurricane to visit my family in the afternoon, And this is the wonderful scene that we drove through! I love it! Snow at Christmas time! There wasn't any on the ground at our house by Christmas day but it was a wonderful Christmas present to have the snow that we did have before that.

Out at mom and dads we had a wonderful time! This is after we had played our spur of the moment Charades for 2 hours. They just moved and we realized that they didn't have any games so we each wrote 10 or so things to act out on a piece of paper and threw them into a hat. Each of us would then draw out something and act it out.

Mom and Dad even played at it was the funnest thing I've done in a long time!
Mom got Mermaid and so she sat up tall in her chair and began to wiggle for all she was worth. Of course the first thing out of my mouth was "Mermaid!". Then we had to stop for a while because we were all laughing so hard that no one could see.

Another favorite for mom was Pogo Sticking. How you may ask would mom get us to guess this from her chair?

Shear brilliance I tell you. First she did "sounds like stick. which morphed into sticking"
then she grabbed the arms of her rocking chair and proceeded to rock so violently that the chair almost started bouncing off the ground!

We got it! And I will forever wish that I had a video of that night because it was so fun with so much laughter and good times that I never want to forget it.

Of course then my brothers had to sit on mother for some quality squishy bonding time!

I love my family!
Merry Christmas to all!