Christmas Day

We spent Christmas Eve baking cookies for Santa. Elias wasn't that disciplined about cutting them out with the cookie cutters, so we manned the decoration station using the sprinkles. Turns out Elias doesn't like sugar cookies all that much. Lucky for him, Santa does.

On Christmas morning, Elias woke up a tad after 5:00 and wanted breakfast. Seems he forgot all about Santa and his cookies. After breakfast, we headed to the tree for present opening! There were WAY too many presents under the tree...for Elias, Matt and me.

First it was the stocking. An orange in the bottom, of course.

Hey, what's that all about?

Then Elias, not versed in the ways of Christmas morning, wanted to play with all of his toys from Santa before moving on to opening other presents. We played a little, but he is a fast learner. Soon, we convinced him to see what else he got.

Aquadoodle pens from Santa.

Marjie and Paul sent way too many gifts. Here are some neat puzzles Elias got. We'll have to work on the picture posing a bit. Aunt Serena and Uncle Justin also sent Elias some great puzzles!

Elias got a lot of books this year too. Good thing that's what he asked for from Santa. Here is a Todd Parr book from his Aunt Stephanie, Uncle Doug, and cousins Ethan and Tate.

Lucky for us, it was the year of homemade gifts. These are our favorite kinds. Grandma Darleen made Elias a super-duper soft pillow case. He carried it around like a blanket most of the day, and it took some convincing to let me put it on his pillow for sleeping that night.


Unfortunately our camera died in the middle of present opening (and there was no stopping the opening now), so I didn't get any pictures of the wonderful stuff Matt and I got. To name a few things: Homemade birdfeeder, homemade knife sharpener, a small tree for displaying Serena's ornaments, a hand carved oven rack slider, photographs of the 4 seasons, a Serena painting masterpiece, some great donations to charities.

Back to Elias. He got a dog (that we named Blue) from Grandpa Don along with some more great books and a t-shirt for this summer. Plus a savings bond...for many summers from now.


Elias got a neat Peter Pan Pop-up book with songs from Aunt Nikki, Uncle Dan, and cousins Gavin and Cohen.


These are just the things I managed to get in pictures. Elias wound up with four neat new games to play too. I think there was even more, but why write about it when we could be playing with everything. Gotta go!