Christmas 2012

We were happy to have Reid home with us for Christmas.  In fact, he's still home with us!  We both think this is the most amount of time that Reid has had off in 5 years when we haven't had a trip planned.  It's been nice to be home and just get some things done.  And Christmas Eve was no exception.  We spent the day cleaning and organizing.  It started as a simple project and then of course we stumbled on more to do.  While I was doing dishes in the afternoon this was the view from the sink.  I LOVED it!  The boys were cleaning out the closet and had found Elmo slippers and DU horns (I think??  We got them when Finn was in the hospital from some girls on the volleyball team that were visiting patients) and Finn decided to put them on.  It was funny to watch him and fun to see them have so much fun with toys that they had forgotten about.

Notice the letters above the bedroom door?  That's for another post, but suffice it to say that Reid and I have realized that baby girl's name can NOT begin with a "C".

 I've mentioned before that Finn is in the weird drop-the-nap, don't drop-the-nap phase and I wasn't sure what to do on Christmas Eve.  If he takes a nap he's up until 9pm at least.  But if he doesn't, it could get dicey.  Well, we decided to skip the nap (too much cleaning going on) and at the dinner table the poor kid's eyes started rolling in his head and he was just about to fall out of his chair.  I put him on my lap hoping to keep up a bit and instead he passed out--it was only 5:30pm.  We decided to finish dinner, have Kai open his Christmas jammies and present from Great-Grandma, get Finn dressed and put him to bed.  He slept through all of it and was in his bed before 6:30pm.  So, we enjoyed a quiet evening with Kai and put out milk and cookies for Santa.  Kai was very excited for Santa to come and kept asking what time it would be.

With Finn's early bedtime I thought for sure I would be up at the crack of dawn--or really earlier, but would you believe that he slept until nearly 5:30am and then went back to sleep when I snuggled up with him.  I ended up talking him out of his bed at 7am, as I was afraid that Kai would be waiting for us.  (He wasn't by the way.  Drats, we should of just let everyone keep sleeping!)

Anyway, the boys got lots of neat gifts and seem to love every single one.  After we had opened all of the presents except for a few labeled for the family we asked Kai what he thought.  He said he had gotten everything he wanted except for one--a telescope.  We told him maybe next year, and then pointed out that we had one box left.  He was so happy to see a telescope in that box!

Leaving cookies for Santa

Legos from his Aunt and Uncle

The castle that Finn had been wanting

This present (in the snowflake paper) remained wrapped until the very end because Reid made the mistake of saying that it was Finn's present from Santa.  After that he wanted nothing to do with it!  We ended up having him use his battering ram from his Aunt and Uncle (shown below) to punch holes into the paper so he could see what it was and feel ok opening it.

Opening....

A battering ram to go with his castle

A fun, creative gift from brother and sister-in-law

The Imaginext Space Shuttle from Grammy and Papa

Sometimes opening presents is just too hard and you need to take a break!

Another creative gift from my brother.  The boys enjoy stretching these bands into the shapes that came on the cards.  

A telescope!

And then begins the process of putting things together

Finn's loot--Notice Jake's ship Bucky, the castle and many accessories including that awesome dragon!

Kai's loot

Playing together

I was pleased with the boys and the way they shared all of their new toys.  In the hours following the opening of gifts the boys played just about everything together--Angry Birds, Superheros, Space Shuttles, Castles, and more.  They were doing so well together that I thought we could have gotten away with half of the presents and just given them to both boys.....oh well, next year?!