Our Christmas!

In between Christmas and heading out to Jon’s parents to celebrate Christmas with them, Jon and I squeezed in our family Christmas with Elijah on Thursday night. My parents were gracious enough to head out, so we had a nice dinner just the three of us, and then opened presents. During the day while I was finishing wrapping presents and getting ready I told Elijah that we were going to open presents that night. He said, “More presents? For me? Yay!” and started running around all excited.

Before we opened presents we opened our stockings, which was a new concept to Elijah. The stockings had been hanging over the fireplace for a few weeks, with Elijah paying no attention to them since he didn’t know they actually had things in them. Once we told him there were things inside them though he was all excited. He wanted his first of course, and we had to explain that there were more things in it than just the train ornament that was on the top. Once he realized that he started taking things out with gusto.

He found a platter of play cookies, just like one he already had but had lost some of the cookies to, and shouted, “More cookies!” as he tossed it to the side. Then he found a bag of popcorn which he said, “Open please,” and handed to Jon. We kept telling him to keep looking, and he was quite excited when he made it to the bottom and found an Elmo train car and then a Lightening McQueen car to play with. Then of course there was a little bit of candy at the bottom too, which got the biggest smile. “Ooh, candy! Ooh, more candy!” Once he emptied his stocking, Elijah quickly stood up and said, “I go get Mommy’s. Open Mommy’s stocking.”

Once we got to actual presents he was really excited when he opened up a set of matchbox cars which had pictures of Mario on them (I was really excited when I found them in the store too, since Elijah loves Mario). Eli had the paper partially ripped off when he spotted a picture of Mario on the back of the package, and then he shouted, “Mario and mushroom man! Yay!”

The baby got Elijah a present too – a Thomas the Tank Engine water doodle pad. Elijah wanted to play with that right away too, and insisted on coloring in EVERY part of the page before going to the next. Fortunately this gave Mom and Dad time to open presents, so it all worked out well. Elijah would open, and then play while Mom and Dad each opened a gift. By that time Eli was ready for more presents of his own. And since we kept ourselves in line this year (Go me! It’s a Christmas miracle!) Elijah had a nice amount of presents, without breaking the bank or spending much.

The biggest hit of the night was when Elijah opened up his new train set though. His eyes got really big and he started wiggling around. Then Mommy and Daddy could not open it up fast enough for him! He got another set of tracks to extend the track capabilities, and after Jon made him a pretty sweet train set-up, Elijah just played and played with his train. Definitely a winner!

We had such a nice night celebrating as our little family, and even if we did squeeze it in between lots of other goings on, we had a great night and made some wonderful memories.