Our family Christmas story

We awoke to a pretty happy baby on Christmas morning around 7:15am.  Having moved into Central Time (an hour later than Mountain Time), we were enjoying the luxury of an "extra" hour of sleep, compared to Evan's normal 6-6:30am wake up time back home in Mountain Time.  Evan seemed to know where to go when I suggested he go to the Christmas tree and see what Santa brought, as he rushed into the front room and quickly found his stocking and gifts that Santa left and took to his new animal farm magnet toy right away.  We made it through our stockings pretty quickly so that we could put on our coats and head over to my dad's house to have Christmas morning with all the rest of the family (still in our pajamas of course, which for Evan was a new pair of Angry Birds pajamas to match his male cousins, who were all wearing their new Angry Birds pj's too).

"Look what Santa brought me mom!"

Daddy reads one of the new books that was in Evan's stocking.

When we arrived, Evan's cousins were anxiously awaiting their release into the living room to see what Santa brought for them.  They each found a Daisy Red Ryder BB Gun, including a pink one for Tyrah.  Since they will be spending the next year on the farm with my dad, they will have plenty of time to learn how to safely use them.  Of course there were a few comments from us onlookers suggesting "you'll shoot your eye out".    We just couldn't resist.

What a "Christmas story" for our family this year!

It was a full house this Christmas.  We each claimed a small piece of living room real estate and Tyrah handed out the rest of the presents from under the tree.  Evan wasn't that interested in sitting and accumulating his pile of gifts, so he spent more time "helping" hand out gifts to others and/or playing with those gifts.

Can you see Donovan behind his stack of gifts? :)

 

Evan's "helping" hand out gifts.

Making our way through all the gifts.

Evan's pile still waiting him to dig in!

After most everyone had torn their way through their presents, we finally set Evan down to try to get him through his.  He got so many cool things, including new clothes and pajamas, some Aussie books and other books from me and John, a stuffed animal that he loved to hug, a twilight turtle (to display stars in his bedroom at night), Little People airplane, toy cell phone, stacking blocks, foam bath letters, and wooden "Melissa and Doug" pounding toys and a wooden gears caterpillar.  He had already gotten his big gifts at home (soccer ball bean bag and Elmo ride-on airplane), since we didn't have room to bring them in the car.  He definitely is loving all these new toys!

Playing with his new caterpillar toy.

We came back to Aunt Linda's house, which is where we've been staying, for the big holiday meal.  Evan got cleaned up into his cute vest and was looking sharp!  Since we'd planned to have our meal during his nap time, we fed him an early lunch and tried to put him down, but he refused to sleep.  I think there was too much excitement in the air.  So he joined us for the meal.  He loved the dinner rolls and also enjoyed the cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie.  He finally took a nap after our meal, but only with John sleeping in the room with him.  The rest of us took that time to go to the hospital to visit my grandpa.

Evan and Aunt Linda

Checking out the piano mat.

Later in the evening, we continued to munch on holiday candy, snacks, and played with all the new toys.  Evan particularly enjoyed a new piano mat that his cousins had gotten for Christmas, however it's all fun and games until someone gets hurt, isn't it?  Evan had been getting so excited playing with his cousins, he was running up and down the hall and onto the piano mat and twirling in circles, and after getting dizzy or running too fast, he had a couple falls.  None of the falls that I witnessed seemed too bad, as Evan would get back up and didn't even wince, but at one point later in the evening the kids started yelling that Evan was bleeding.  Of course this caught my attention and I look over to see my son running toward me with blood on the side of his head.  I immediately worried he'd hurt his head badly.  However, he was not crying and as I got a closer inspection of his wounds, the blood was actually coming from the inside of one of his fingers.  It was a little slice on the inside of his pinky finger, not sure what caused it, but it was still bleeding good.  Thus, anything that he touched got bloody, including his head, face, and even his cousin Donovan's shirt.  There was also a good bit of blood on the floor and piano mat.  All for a little cut in his finger, that we got cleaned up and attempted to get a bandaid on (however he pulled it off almost as soon as we got it on...at least it had done its job to stop the bleeding).

Soon after that incident it was bed time for Evan, so the party wound down pretty quickly.  I read Evan one of his new books called "Why I love Christmas" and we got a nice surprise at the end (it had a photo of Baby Evan and Nana Louise).  It was the perfect ending to a lovely Christmas Day.  And the best part yet was that Evan went to sleep really well that night.