Conner Family Blog: I Love Christmas!

Christmas Eve ...

We had a quiet Christmas at home this year. We all had Christmas Eve and Christmas Day off. We spent most of Christmas Eve (day) relaxing, playing, and cooking.

We actually decorated our house this year (or rather paid STB Landscape to do it). They custom made the lights for our house. We paid a little extra to get LED lights. I loved having lights on our house. Every night when I would bring Sam home from day care he would say, "there are my lights!" Most of the houses on our street were decorated, so it felt very festive.

We had a big dinner on Christmas Eve. Chris brined a turkey breast. I made turkey gravy, cornbread stuffing, sweet potato casserole, green bean casserole, and pumpkin pie. It may sound like a lot, but they are all amazingly simple to make, and very child friendly. The idea was to make a big dinner so we could have leftovers and not have to cook on Christmas Day. Plus, these are the foods that I grew up eating during the holidays, and I always miss Mississippi during the holidays.

Christmas "morning" ...

I don't know what happened on Christmas morning, but we got up very late (for a two year old). Since we rolled out of bed at 10 a.m., got Sam dressed, and had breakfast, it was about 11 a.m. before we started opening presents.

How could a kid possibly sleep late on Christmas morning? Well, we really didn't make a big deal about "tomorrow is Christmas." He knew Christmas was coming, but he didn't know exactly when.

Why did we get dressed? Don't people usually open presents in their pajamas? Well, Sam is potty trained, but he still sleeps in a pull-up. He wants to put on underwear as soon as he gets out of bed. Once he has his underwear on, he wants to get dressed. There's really no point in arguing with him over that one.

How could we get Sam to wait until after breakfast to open presents? Well, that one was a little harder, but we knew he was going to crash hard and fast if we didn't get some food in him before we started. It was a good thing, because there was no way we could drag him away from his presents to eat lunch.

We started with the stockings.

Mmmmm PEZ! Sam called him Tigger the Pooh instead of Winnie the Pooh at first. He ate all three packages of PEZ that came with Pooh on Christmas day. I bought some refills, but I'm planning to hold him to one package of PEZ a day.

Cool shades!

Stocking video.

Sam helping DeeDah with his stocking stuffers.

Even Cleo got a stocking.

Here she is with her new toy.

Present time!!! We stopped and played with everything as we opened it, so it took about two hours to finish.

A shoot-through flash umbrella for Chris.

A book for Sam.

A toaster oven for me! I've wanted one for years. We just didn't have space in the old house. I've used it every day since we got it.

Of course anything Thomas related got the biggest reaction from Sam.

A Thomas the Train collapsing bridge.

A light stand and shoe mount for some flash photography. Once all the pieces were opened, Chris had to play with his toys right away.

Sam opening some play-doh. That's Cranky the crane in the foreground.

I love Christmas!

Santa got Sam a LeapFrog ClickStart with Dora and Diego games.

We had a lot of fun playing the games later that afternoon. He really started getting the hang of the mouse and keyboard.

Aunt Sharon always sends the noisy toys!

Baseball set from Uncle Costas and Aunt Paola. We love outside toys!

Are you sure that's all the presents, Mommy?!?!?

Calling family to say thank you and Merry Christmas.

Hungry, Hungry, Hippo. This was one of my favorite games as a kid. Sam is funny when he plays. He picks a hippo that he wants to feed, and he picks up its head and "feeds" it a marble. Melanie and I both remember the rules being that you put all the marbles in the middle and then it's a free-for-all, slapping those hippos and getting as many marbles as you can. That's obviously the way most kids play. However, the official rules are to go in a circle playing one marble at a time. Yeah, right!

Sam playing with his new Thomas toys.

Chris's new toys.

This is a picture that Chris took while experimenting with the shoot-through umbrella. The toy that Sam is playing with is an automoblox. It's a wooden car puzzle. Sam loves it. He takes it apart and puts it back together over and over again. It looks really cool too. We got two of them because you can mix and match the parts to make different configurations. Sam does not like it when we try to put the red wheels on the green truck, or the green people in the red car. He's not into the concept of mix and match yet.

Photography by Chris ...

Chris wanted all the umbrellas and other flash accessories so that he could try some portrait photography. Here is a picture that he took of me in front of the Christmas tree. I am hoping that we can get one of Sam too, but he's not quite as cooperative.

Chris also got the opportunity to photograph Jennifer's sister's wedding over the weekend. It was quite a challenge, but he was happy with the results.