Christmas

We enjoyed a nice Christmas at home this year. It was actually our first Christmas in this house, since last year we were in CA.

We went out and looked at Christmas lights on a couple of different occasions. The first time we stopped to see Santa who had his sleigh parked in front of someone’s house every evening on the weekends. It was very kind of him.  Shayla wasn’t upset, but she was her usual shy self and wouldn’t talk to him. Afterward that’s all she could talk about was Santa, and he was nice, and he gave her a “canny cane.”

This picture is of Shayla hanging up her ornament that she got from nursery. She hadn’t been to nursery since Easton was born because she had (and still does) a cough that refuses to go away. They gave the ornament to David, and she got to hang it on the tree. Shayla loves the lights on the Christmas tree. I kept telling her we look with our eyes, and we don’t touch, but she still couldn’t help taking off some of the ornaments. She did a pretty good job at keeping it together though. We were even able to keep a few of the presents under the tree without her opening them.

We also went and saw Christmas lights at the Mesa Temple with some of my family. Apparently she was too enthralled with the lights to actually look at the camera.

With her cousin Charlotte, and Uncle Matt, and her daddy of course.

We also made some goodies to take to neighbors, and friends in our ward. Shayla loved helping cut out the cookies (and sneaking bites of the dough in the process).

On Christmas Eve, we had a nice dinner with ham (smoked by my dad), funeral/cheesy/whatever-you-call-them potatoes, Margie’s Jello (made by David), and lots of Christmas goodies. We tried to do the nativity, but Shayla wasn’t too keen on getting dressed up, even though she had the coveted role of Mary. So instead, we sang some Christmas songs, which Shayla did enjoy.

Can’t leave out the little man…

Christmas morning, David got up and went to our 8 am church. I was still home with Easton, and Shayla still had her cough (plus David was going to be in the choir the whole time anyway). We ate breakfast (making sure to sneak Shayla down the stairs so she couldn’t see the bounty), gave Shayla a bath, and then we got around to opening gifts. Shayla got the hang of opening her gifts instantly. Sometimes we had a hard time getting her to open her gifts because she instantly wanted to unpack and play with the gift that she had just opened.

I bought a kitchen set off of Craigslist, and that was an instant hit (and still is a fave, although there are always pieces of plastic food strewn all over our whole house).

She also really liked this cell phone that she got from her Nana and Grandpa Snow. Mostly because it makes noise, but she also likes to pretend like she’s talking on the phone as well.

She also got some Little People toys, and some soft puppet stuffed animals, and an activity table (which she also loves). It was a little difficult to get her to take a picture with her toys, because all she wanted to do was play with them. That’s why I’m holding her in the picture.

 

As you can see, Easton was quite thrilled with the whole experience.

After opening gifts, we hurried on over for a late Christmas breakfast with all of my family.

This little dude quickly became the center of attention.

And this little lady doing her best to win that attention back.

Playing with her cousin Charlotte.

Her aunt Mariah made this cute hat for her, and she didn’t want to take it off.

Easton also got himself a hat. beanie. whatever.

This is a video of the little girls opening up a gift together. You can just ignore my dad listing off every. single. movie. When my parent’s get a bunch of movies, it’s like a gift to us because we all just take turns borrowing them. We don’t have to rent movies too often. You can tell that Shayla likes movies too.

Group shots

We got some family pictures since we were all dressed up. I won’t show you the first 50 where Shayla wouldn’t sit still, and/or smile. What finally worked was everyone else started singing songs to her. That’s what got the big grin.

Shayla loving on her little brother.

We finally let her hold Easton for the first time, since her cough seemed to be a little better.

Even Easton liked it.

She really does love her little brother.

After we finished exchanging gifts, we paid a visit to Grandma Reed.

We had an enjoyable Christmas. It was fun now that Shayla had a better idea of what was going on, and just nice to be together as a family.