Opening Presents with Mom and Dad!

After all our present-opening festivities with Jon’s parents, it was time for Elijah to have Christmas with his parents! The day after Christmas we had a nice dinner by candlelight and then opened our gifts for each other. Right before gifts I set up my tripod, camera, and camera remote, and we decided try and get a family picture in front of the tree. We weren’t really sure how it was going to work, since there wouldn’t be anyone behind the camera to get Elijah to smile, but we decided to give it a go. Turns out that Eli loves when the camera light flashes and beeps really fast (right before it goes off) and if we said “Smile!” then he would!

Say cheese!

They're kissing me! They're kissing me!

Elijah figured out pretty quickly that the little remote Mommy was pushing made the camera go – so he of course decided that he HAD to hold it. He was able to push the button and get the camera to go, so that was good for a few minutes (and about 20 pictures) of fun. As a result we have quite a few nice pictures of our little family.

I managed to snag the remote! Hehe!

Once the present-opening began we didn’t need to convince Eli to rip right in. In fact, he wanted to open ALL the presents for us. :) He got some Veggietales worship cds, some books, a puzzle, a driving toy, and a new push-n-go train. He loves the toys and was mildly interested in the cds and books. Predictable. :)

A driving toy! I'm ready to go crusin' for some chicks now.
What's in this thing? And who put so much tape on it?

A toy train! Choo choo!

Mom didn't think I'd actually be able to put the pieces back in without lots of practice. I'll show her!

It was neat to have Christmas with just our little family. I think last year Jon and I squeezed in Christmas the two of us while Elijah was sleeping, but from now on we’ll be having family celebrations of our own. Our first real Christmas celebration with Elijah was a lot of fun, so I'm looking forward to more and more years of enjoying Christmas with our boy. Merry Christmas!

Present opening is done, but I found the remote so it must be picture time again!

I'm going to take one of me and Mom!
The Schneider family in front of the tree - Christmas 2006.
(picture courtesy of Elijah, who snapped it with the remote control)