Christmas 2011

Christmas this year was a blur. It came and went so fast and I'm still reeling from its' passing and sad that it's over. I'm not sure how much Tate actually "got" this year about Santa Claus, but he certainly understood more than last year. We did a little Christmas story advent and opened a new book each night for our bed time story. He loved hearing all the new stories and I think they helped him understand Christmas more than anything else we did.

Christmas Eve we made Christmas cookies for Santa and left carrots for the reindeer. It was all so much fun.

Christmas morning he slept in until 9:30. It was awesome. It would have been more awesome if Finn had slept in too...but awesome none the less.

He ran right to his new marble ramp and started playing.

Eventually he got to his stocking which held the greatest treasures of the day: fun new cars. He got a bunch of new little cars that fit on his train table track. A new tiny dump truck, cement truck, and steam roller and such and we could have just stopped there. He could have played all day with those and not opened another thing.

Eventually we got him to open some of his other presents. A trumpet from Nanna. A new drum, which could only be played while marching of course.

We even had a little parade at one point, marching behind Tate around the house. Santa also brought Tate a big wheel bike. He's still figuring out how to ride and steer it.

Tate was absolutely spoiled beyond belief by his family from afar. Lots of new movies, an awesome remote control car (which he spent a good part of the day chasing around our house in circles), a cool Thomas flashlight, darling new clothes. It was incredible.

It was hard being so far away from family on Christmas this year. It was a bit lonely, especially in my sleep-deprived, hyper-emotional, four days postpartum state. We kept it pretty low-key. We got on skype with my family and called some of Glenn's. We spent most of the day watching Tate go from new toy to new toy and just having an absolute blast.

He was so happy and so entertained by all his new things and it was fun to watch him be so excited all day. We couldn't even get him to finish opening all his presents so a few of them went back in the closet for his birthday.

This was a Christmas we'll never forget, that's for sure. I can only imagine that next year will be even more fun with two littles and Tate a bit older. Christmas might be my favorite day to be a parent. It was awesome to watch Tate enjoy all the magic.