Merry Christmas

I wish all you family and friends could have been here for the most exciting Christmas. I'll try to talk you through it.
First Santa came. Look at all these presents! He stuffed our stockings too!

The boys woke up this morning. Not super early, pretty normal time. They had candy canes and rolls for breakfast.

When Nana and Gram came we pulled all the presents out from under the tree and put them in the living room. (The office/craft room is too small to open in but we put the tree there so it shows through the front window, also kids can't get in there without adults so that helps curious todlers stay away from presents. Can you BELIEVE all these presents? Me either.

Ethan opening his shopping cart. He loves it.

Me opening one of my MANY "thrift finds" presents from my mom. It's a vintage sewing kit box FULL of sewing notions. And I SERIOUSLY needed this box. I was using this cookie tin, but the lid doesn't go on right and it's too small. I needed a vintage turquiose sewing box stuffed full of notions.

Marcia opening her Swedish Fish. The boys enjoy these as a treat with their Grammy (my mom) and wanted Marcia to enjoy them too. So they used their own cute little money (which they got from the magician) to buy these.

Brian's aunt makes the boys stuff every year. This year it was adorable quilts. Ethan, he loves this little moose she tucked in best though! haha.

Santa got this. The story here is when we did letters to Santa, Ethan said, "I want that yellow truck Stephen wants to give to Stephen" That's one of only a very few things Ethan asked for this year. So he got it of course! And Stephen is so happy! Ethan loves it too, this toy got the most play time today. Santa also got some extra cars for it to eat but it DOES eat normal matchbox cars, so we are thrilled.

This giant Brian grin is because I found him this T-Shirt that says, "I fart in your general direction" you Monte Python fans will get it. Everyone else just move along.

One of Brian's messge board friends Tod got Stephen this transformer years ago. We saved it until he would be old enough to do it. It was a huge hit.

More transformer joy.

Here he is teaching Ethan how to do the transformer.

Look at this suprised joy face!

Brian drew this picture of his grandmother back when he was in high school art class. He planned to give it to her then but felt it wasn't "good enough". This year he found it again, decided it was indeed good enough. I bought it a frame and we gave it to her this year. She loved it.

Apparently Marcia had never seen it. She was impressed too.

Another big gift this year was this quilt I made Brian's Gram. She had bought the white and blue fabric decades ago in hopes of making it. She bought it precut. She never made it. When I took up sewing again this year she gave it to me, to do "whatever" with. Well of course I made it into a quilt for Gram. I added the yellow sashing and such and there you have it. She loved it. :)

And the boys got... CUBS!

Cubs are super realistic stuffed animal/robots. They do all sorts of baby animal stuff. Stephen's is a polar bear so it does polar bear stuff, like pant and make little cute bear noises. He is letting us call it "Cubbie" but he said it has a name but won't tell us the name. (I guess it's a name of power?) They were from Gramma Sue and "Gramma Sue's Grampa"

I know it looks like Ethan is about to beat his cub with a pillow, but he's not. Ethan is a bit afraid of his cub. So he's getting it a pillow to let it sleep on, so it will stop talking to him. He loves the cub sleeping, is nervous of it awake. He will fall in love soon though, Ethan is pretty brave.

And there you have it. HOURS of present opening draws to a close and Ethan flops out on the floor.

After all this I made food. We had spiral ham, greenbean casserole, sweet potato casserole, corn, mashed potatoes, olives, cranberry sauce, gravy, pumpkin pie, apple pie, cream for pies, egg nog. I cooked all. Marcia and Gram did dishes. It's my favorite Christmas treat, a day without dishes! and there are TONS of Christmas dishes too. I should have taken a photo of our Christmas table, I thought it was going to buckle under all that food. Oh and I went overboard, the ham was 12lbs. For four adults and two toddlers. Although turns out my kids will put away some ham!

After food I took a nap. I missed watching Wall-E which the boys got. I actually missed the pie too, but no worries I had some just before typing all this. I have to figure out where to put all my Christmas presnts now. Another thing I missed while napping was putting up presents. I thought if I slept long enough they'd do mine, but alas, no.

I've had a cold all week, but I felt great today. Other than getting really tired early and having to take that nap I mean.

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas.