Christmas Tales

We got to celebrate Christmas at our own house for the first time ever with lots of grandparent love. Grammy and Granddad came to stay with us. Plus, with Grandma and Poppop in town, we got to share the holidays with them as well. We started off the celebration by heading to the mall to go see Santa. After waiting in line for an hour and a half (not as bad as it seems since we really only had to leave one person in line with the stroller at a time and we all took turns wandering around), it was finally our turn. Eliza, who had been in a good mood the WHOLE time waiting, and had waved to Santa from a distance, absolutely FREAKED out when placed on his lap. We let her scream for about a minute before scooping her up away from the strange bearded man. Hayden, meanwhile, did great talking to Santa and smiling for pictures.

Once we had guests in the house, I set out my tray of Christmas cookies I'd been working on all December. For some reason, I wanted to have my own plate of cookies to set out for guests for the holidays, even though we didn't have all that many guests! That meant lots of cookies for us to eat! (There are still some in the freezer now.) Plus Grammy helped Hayden make her special sugar cookies for Santa. Note the non-traditional, Hayden-requested pink icing for the decorating!

We also hosted Christmas Eve dinner (baked ziti with local sausage! Yum!) for us, Grammy, Granddad, Grandma and Poppop after all going to the children's service at church. Prior to church, there were plenty of pictures since we had the girls all dressed up in their holiday finery. The girls with us, the girls with Grammy and Granddad. And then we tried just to have the two girls in front of the tree but that ended up with Eliza sprawled on the floor so we just did them separately.


This last one was taken after dinner when I told Hayden I wanted to take a cute picture of her in her fancy dress. She then posed in her "cute" pose, that was awfully cute (and funny) but didn't really show her dress! Oh well.
Then Hayden helped write a note to Santa and set out cookies for Santa and a carrot for the reindeer. Can you read what she had me write down for Santa? She signed it with an H and an E for her and Eliza.
After the kids were down, I made chocolate lava cakes with sugared raspberries for dessert! Delicious!

The next morning was so fun with Hayden and Eliza. Eliza got a ride-on horse from Santa which she immediately climbed on. Hayden got a mixer that was promptly used to mix up various smoothies (chicken smoothie anyone?) for breakfast. When Grandma and Poppop arrived, we started in on the stockings. Hayden had a great time opening up each item and exclaiming over it, including the chocolate teddy grahams seen here. Eliza didn't quite get opening presents, but she did like seeing what was inside each package, like these snazzy sunglasses! Santa made good choices for stocking stuffers!

After a yummy Christmas breakfast (including a minor Christmas miracle - a flavorful cantaloupe!), we opened some more presents. Eliza and Hayden each got a doll from us and both were very excited. Hayden promptly named hers "brown-eyed girl" and welcomed her into her doll family. Eliza grabbed hers and cuddled it as soon as we got it out of the box. Two successful presents even if it didn't solve the "that's MY doll" feuding in the house. The girls made it through most of the presents in good spirits. Eliza did get a little tired towards the end and cuddled with her blanket on the floor.


For Christmas dinner all of us went over to my parents' house and had a wonderful time. I introduced Hayden to the joy of sitting in front of a roaring fire. Notice that her baby is seated on the edge, away from the heat. :) Hayden even liked laying down on her back after sitting in front of the fire. I'm glad she can appreciate the true pleasures of life!

And though we didn't have a white Christmas, we did have a white day-after-Christmas. We awoke to a winter wonderland of 5 inches of snow! Quite the feat for North Carolina. Enough snow that poor Granddad got to do some shoveling for us (I bet he wasn't expecting that when he came south for Christmas).


There was even sledding and snowman construction. We had joked about whether we should move our sled south with us and it's lucky we decided to bring them along!

Merry Christmas!