Merry Christmas Day!

Aiden is finally beginning to understand Christmas.  Santa brought way too many presents and we are going to have to ask Santa to bring down the gifts next year.  Or save some for birthday.

This year, Santa came a day early.  We have a tradition to go to Goodwins for Christmas Eve.  Because Christmas was on Sunday this year and both Jodi and I had to play for the choirs at church, we couldn't figure out how to make it all work.  So, Jodi asked the bigger kids and they didn't care if we did it early, the younger kids didn't know anyway, so we just moved the advent calendars up a day (stealthily, of course) and did the whole Christmas thing early.  It was just like Christmas.  From the ham dinner (thanks, Jodi, it was amazing) to the nativity to the presents.  No one missed a beat.  Purely fantastic.

Aiden loves he cousin, Alyssa.  She is so cute with him.  

Jodi made sugar cookies and the kids decorated them for Christmas

We do the nativity every Christmas Eve.  This year, Aiden was Joseph.  And he was pretty cute, I would say.

Alyssa volunteered to the be the donkey and to keep Joseph in the nativity.  Amelia was the good parent and sat with Baby Jesus the whole time.  She is so cute and precious.

Everyone in the nativity.  Even the two dinner guests.  Troopers.

After dinner, we made reindeer food and laid out cookies for Santa.  Then Mrs. Claus found our house and dropped off jammies for everyone.  (another super-fun tradition that Jodi started)

We were able to sleep over and sleep in until 7:15.  Then the real fun began.  

Jodi has a tradition that her smallest child dresses up as Santa's Elf and is the helper for the day.  Since none of her kids fit the Elf costume anymore, my little elf got to be the helper.  And that is stinkin' cute.  

So...much... Thomas...

Aiden is one of those kids that doesn't freak out with presents.  I am sure he will, but he really just likes to sit and open them, then enjoy each one for a while.  It took us all morning to get through just a handful of presents, so we packed up the rest for later.

Aiden got a new bike for Christmas.  And Alyssa was nice enough to help him with it.  He is fascinated by the bell.

The kids played while the adults played games in the early afternoon.  Goodwins got this game that is a mixture of Jenga and Scrabble, only on steroids.

After a day of fun and frivolity, we went home and had a much needed nap.  Aiden opened a few more presents and we had dinner.  Then, we headed off to Smedleys to give them our presents to them.

By way of explanation - Breanna bought all her sisters and Aiden ugly Christmas sweaters and wanted Aiden to wear it.  He loves Nana.

Thomas sweats, Thomas loafers, Thomas pillow - this kid is loved.  

Most importantly - he got the Troublesome Trucks to go with his ever-growing collection of trains.  And they talk!!!!

They also bought him some DC skater shoes that are the BOMB and new church clothes (see below).

After Smeds, we went home and just watched movies and relaxed in new jammies.  It was awesome.  We had a few Christmas books left to read, so we just chilled out and had a great time.

And my washer broke.  

But Christmas morning, Aiden was playing with his trucks and didn't want to get ready for church, but when he opened his new church shoes from Uncle Chris, he was jazzed.  We went to church, and he fell asleep 15 minutes in.  YAY!!!  (Much needed nap...)

When we got home, we had a lovely dinner of leftovers from Jodi's house on my new Christmas dishes (thank you, Smeds) and opened more presents from Uncle Chris and Aunt Teresa.  Aiden got two movies from Uncle Chris, some more fun Thomas things and more church clothes (we were hurting for church clothes) and a new phone for mom (yay!!!!) and a new set of knives (yay!!!!)

We were so blessed this Christmas with three full days of festivities, lots of love from everyone in our world and friends and family who we would die without.  

Merry Christmas to all!!

Many apologies

So you don't think that Aiden and I just stopped our frenzied activities before Christmas, I must explain.  I found it was better to focus on the activities and having a blast rather than blogging.  But we did every single thing on the list.  WHEW it was fun.  Here are some pics from the days:

Whew.  Mom looks really super tired and weary.  

Aiden got the crappy flu one day and threw up everywhere.  So, our activity was to stay close at home and watch Merry Madagascar.  In our jammies.

We also made those super swell ornaments made of foam one night.  He loved it.  Best $1 ever spent

We also went to see Zoolights.  It was cold, but not as cold as last year.  The big cats were also super active, so that was fun.  Aiden, of course, saw the train and just loved it.  It is the first set of lights in the zoo and he just wanted to stay there.  Mean mom made him go explore.

Cold Monkey on the carousel

Another day, we went back to the train at Newgate Mall.  He seems to just want to do this activity every night, so we ended up doing it twice in December.  He was thrilled.

Oh yes.  We went shopping one night for our activity and Aiden needed a haircut in a bad way.  This picture was just too amazing to leave out of the blog.

Our annual "Faux Festival of Trees" - actually Aiden doesn't have the patience to go to the real festival, so we go to Tai Pan Trading and look at the cool trees there.  It is better for a 2-year old.

He wrote a letter to Santa.  He actually did help me write it.  It looks like I have palsy in my hand, but it was because a toddler "helped".  

So, with this and a thousand other fun activities, our 25 Days of Christmas comes to an end.  I would like to believe that we will keep this tradition going year after year because it really is so fun to focus on the magic of Christmas for a whole month.  I remember when I was a child, Christmas seemed to last forever and the magic was amazing.  I realize now that it is because my mother made the whole season fun.  I wanna do that same thing with Monkey.  Two years down.  About a million to go... I hope.