I wanted to write a long post about our Christmas, but with Thom, Aaron and Audrey sick over the holidays and me being perpetually behind on work, I haven't found the time. And then I didn't want to post new entries on the blog until I did Christmas first. So I'm going to try to get caught up.
We had a live tree again. I like that it is small and easy to decorate and undecorate. I left off the glass ornaments after Aaron broke a couple last year and mostly stuck to non-breakable ornaments. Most of the ornaments have special meaning. There are ones from my mom; one from the first year we had the house, one of a pregnant snowman (when I was pregnant with Aaron), one from Aaron's first Christmas, and now one for Audrey's first Christmas. There are ornaments we've gotten from Aunt Janine every year, ones that my sister Theresa and brother Jeff made in year's past. A pickle from Aunt Sherry.
Aaron really enjoyed his advent calendars this year. My mom gets him one and so does Aunt Janine and Uncle Bruce. We also have a wooden advent calendar house with 25 doors which I put little ornaments behind for a little wooden tree I have. So every morning we opened all three advent calendars (which we had to do in the same order every day, because that is how Aaron is). He still wanted to do advent calendars after Christmas, but he adjusted pretty well when we told him advent was over.
When we opened presents on Christmas morning, Aaron actually enjoyed it, unlike last year when he cried and just wanted to play with his puzzles.
We got him a few things, but not much since we knew he'd get a lot of gifts from aunts and uncles. Our big gift was an all terrain wagon, but after getting Aaron to bed and looking at the assembly instructions at 8:30pm, with Audrey still awake and fussy, I put the wagon back in the box. It had been sitting in the entry way for weeks and sat there until this last Thursday - Aaron never said a word about it. But after Grandpa assembled it on Thursday, he loves playing with it and riding in it. He thinks Grandpa gave it to him!
We got him a preschool game called Orchard in which players compete against a blackbird to get the fruit out of the trees. The players either win together or lose together - you don't compete against each other, which seemed like a good intro to board games. We let him play with the fruit by himself in the morning, so when we took it to my parents' house to play with his cousins, he had some trouble taking turns and following directions from his cousins. But we are working on the whole "game" concept.
Thom got him some Colorforms, like he had when he was a kid. He likes those, but just likes to put the pieces on the board, not actually using them to make pictures. Thom also got him a book called Long Night Moon.
We went to my parents house close to nap time, hoping that Thom and Aaron might lie down for a little nap. I didn't want to put Aaron down for a nap here since we'd have gotten to my parents' house too late. He fell asleep in the car, and wouldn't go back to sleep over there, but he had fun with his cousins.
Since my brother's kids spent Christmas day with their mom, we had another gathering of the family on Sunday after Christmas at our house.
It was nice to see so much of our family. I just wish Thom hadn't been sick the whole time he took off work (between Christmas and New Year's) and that Aaron and Audrey hadn't gotten sick, too. But they are all well now. And the tree is put away, the house is mostly back in order and January is half over. Not sure how that all happened.
Here's looking forward to a great 2010.
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