Christmas 2010

WOW, we had an AMAZINGLY AWESOME Christmas; there truly is nothing more enjoyable then experiencing Christmas with Children. Having young children (1 & 3), every Christmas is more exciting then the previous year; this year Benjamin began to understand the concept of Christmas and Santa which brought much joy and cheer into our house. I’m teaching my children the true meaning of Christmas, I don’t go over board on Santa and presents, however I do want to have the magic of Christmas in my children’s lives. I attempted to have a fairly simple Christmas, majority of the presents where things the boys needed (flannel sheets, toothbrushes [Tomas the Tank Engine spin brush], socks, underwear, bath soaps/crayons…) and things they love/enjoy (add-on to Benjamin’s Train, books and toys that make the noise for Hayden). When family and friends asked what the boys need/want I simply responded "to donate to a charity in their name", well…the boys ended up with more toys then they needed (my husband and I put toys away for later in the year)…sooo yeah, the boys made out INCREDIBLE well this year!

Christmas Eve we watched Children’s Christmas classics (Frosty the Snowman, Rudolph, etc), we baked Christmas Eve cookies for Santa, I made a nice family dinner, we drove around looking at Christmas lights, sprinkled reindeer food on the lawn, put the magic key on the door for Santa, tracked santa (celebrated when Santa arrived in Germany where my brother-in-law is stationed), placed cookies on the counter for Santa and my husband made chai and brandy lend oomph to apple cake.

Christmas morning, I woke up to the sound of Benjamin talking about Santa in his room, while I was getting Hayden changed Benjamin burst into our bedroom joyfully yelling “wake up daddy, wake up, presents” for the first time in his short history of Christmas…talk about a warm fuzzy feeling! We finally made our way downstairs and much to my surprise Benjamin didn’t notice presents under the tree for a good 3-5 minutes, which lead me to believe he doesn’t fully understand Christmas yet but when he did finally see the gifts he lit up! My husband spent much of the morning assembling toys, setting up train tracks and we all played together with the boys’ new gifts. We had lunch at my parents and then to dinner with my husband’s family; we all crashed shortly after returning home that night.

December 26th my husband and I had a LOOOOONG overdue date night, we dropped the kiddos off at my parents and headed out for a nice, quiet, catch up on conversations dinner; afterwards we headed to our first IMAX 3d movie…WOW, TOTALLY AWESOME!

Because I LOVE photos & graphic design, I wanted to share the gifts we (meaning I ;-P ) created for the grandparents, star ornament and every year we give them a photo book.