Christmas 2010

We started our Christmas celebration this year last weekend at my mom & Randy's house. We joined them, Susan, Will and his kids and my Grandma. It was a nice, casual evening with pizza and salad for dinner and then opening gifts. Hannah was oh, so excited for the gift opening! Nicholas on the other hand could really care less, but did enjoy eating the paper! He really preferred to play with the door stop, which is his favorite thing to do at Grandma's house these days!

Here was the attempt at their picture by the tree together.

Hannah's favorite gift was her Tangled Barbie - which plays a song when you push the button. Note to parents - this has an annoying factor of 10 because the song is only a few seconds long and when your child pushes the button so much in less than two days that the batteries wear out, well, you can understand where I'm going!!! But she loves it!

And Nicholas sure got a kick out of his dancing alligator!

And here are the kids with their Great-Grandma!

Then we just had a busy week getting ready for Christmas. Christmas Eve was spent at home cleaning and doing last minute preparations. Hannah watched Taylor Swift's "Journey to Fearless" a few times. She absolutely LOVES Taylor Swift and I'm so happy that she does - she's a terrific role model! So anyway, she mostly loved to dance to the music.

But then she asked to let her hair down and wanted to play the guitar like Taylor. So she got Tony's guitar, which is way too big for her, but she loved to play along with Taylor. It was awesome!

So we're thinking about getting her a kid sized guitar for her birthday. She's been so into music lately so we'll probably enroll her in music lessons too - either panio or guitar, whichever she seems more interested in. She's been asking to learn, and the real interest with Taylor is a great motivator!

Then after naps, we got ready and I took both kids to Christmas Eve service at church. This was my first attempt to take Nicholas to church and it went pretty well. He only escaped toward the front once!!! I pretty much kept him busy with Cheerios and graham crackers. He loved to dance to the music! After church, we headed over to Dawn & Jack's for dinner and Christmas celebration. Here is our awesome family by their tree this year.

And since the Baker's all compete to see who can "make the blog", I'll include them all (in no particular order) since it's Christmas!!! Congratulations even though I'm pretty sure you're all making fun of me!

Here's Kendal with the kids

And Krista feeding Nicholas pumpkin pie!

This super-great picture of Hannah with Aunt Dawn.

And then this oh-so-cool and silly Uncle Jack in his snowboarding gear!!!

Sorry, John, I didn't really get a good picture of you doing anything cool?!?!

So Santa came to Aunt Dawn's right on schedule and brought some great things, Baby Alive being the one thing that was high on Hannah's list! She loved feeding her many times and going through diapers, which after the first one ended up becoming half a box of tissues with scotch tape!

Nicholas wasn't such a fan of Santa.

Oh, here's one of John with Santa.

And Hannah gave Santa some very grateful, loving hugs before he left.

We had to head back home to get ready for Santa to come to our house. Hannah left him a note with some milk & cookies and carrots for the reindeer. She left him and extra note to remind him to go to Columbus too because that's where Grandma & Grandpa Roberts were this year....she wanted to make sure they got presents too this year!

And then she went off to bed and I fell asleep on the couch and then Santa came to fill the empty space under the tree!

To my great surprise, I woke up around 8:00 on Christmas morning to hear Nicholas fussing. I let him fuss a while to wake Hannah up and while I was changing him, she got up and was so excited that it was Christmas morning!

We headed downstairs and started to open gifts. It was fun to watch Hannah's excitement and Nicholas having fun with all the paper and boxes! Hannah's favorites were here Leapster2 and her Tangled Dress, which she promptly put on and wore the rest of the day (and weekend). Her face was in that Leapster too the rest of the weekend, which made me realize it will need limits!

Nicholas enjoyed his new fire truck push/ride toy, but also liked playing with the train also.

Tony made me a calendar with pictures of the kids

And Tony once again had a Merry Kissmas!!

After gift opening, we had a special breakfast of waffles with strawberries and whipped cream - YUM!

Dad & Julia came over around noon and we hung out until Aunt Susan and Uncle Will got there around 2:00. We had dinner and then opened gifts yet again! Gee, so much stuff!!!

Hannah got the 2010 Holiday Barbie, but we'll be sorry if someday it's worth a million dollars in the box, because she's an almost 5 year old and wants to play with it!

Nicholas enjoyed his vibrating John Deere teething ring!!

Everyone headed home and we hung out playing a little while longer. Hannah and Nicholas sure enjoy being silly together!

They are the best gifts I could ever ask for! We have been so fortunate this year and got some really great things for Christmas, but our beautiful family is really all I needed this year - I'm so blessed and greatful!

Merry Christmas everyone!