Christmas again and again

Mom and Chris came up Christmas night and we all had a lovely ham dinner prepared by Chef Steve. It was a funny dinner because Steve, Ethan and I had been in our PJs all day and had no plans to get dressed so we ate in the dining room on the china in our PJs! On top of that, the table cloth I had bought was too short for the table with the leaf in, and our centerpiece was the Charlie Brown Christmas Tree that mom and Chris made for us. It was a good combination of fun and fancy.



This is one of Ethan's favorite activities these days...lining up all of his trains in one line and his cars in another. Don't even think of moving them or changing the order.



The morning after Christmas, Jamie and Matt came up and we all had Christmas together. Jamie gave Ethan a piggy bank that tells you what type of coin your putting in and it keeps track of your total for you. However, you have to insert the coin at just the right angle with just the right pressure or it doesn't work! We ended up busting out the directions because we couldn't get the coins to go in. We were laughing pretty hard at ourselves for being stumped by the piggy bank of all things.

Grandma Jan gave Ethan speedy fast Lightning McQueen slippers!

This is an inside family joke, but I wrapped up my old crock pot for Jamie since I have a super duper new one.

Jamie made Ethan a wrapping paper hood.

Look at the concentration on that face! Too bad that controller wasn't actually on or he would have been kicking some Super Mario Galaxy butt!

Saturday night we me The Schulers at Linda and Paul's house and all of us Northeast cousins were together for the first time in a long time! Of course I didn't get a picture of us all together (duh!), but here are Josh, Bekah, Heather and Joel.

Shawn (who wasn't sleeping despite how he looks in this picture!), Barbie, Jamie and Jenny.

Steve sporting his new Steelers fleece.

Chris and Ingrid.

Paul and Jenny reading Caps for Sale to the munchkin. This is one of Jenny's favorite books. It's about a peddler who takes a nap under a tree and has all of his caps stolen by the monkey's in the tree.

Ethan opening the book Stickman.

Steve reading Stickman to the little man. It's a cute story about a stickman who gets separated from his stick family and all of the perils that face a stickman in the great wide world.

What a wonderful whirlwind of a holiday it was this year! We missed our Schoenholtz family members though. I am happy to report that we fully recovered our house from the craziness of the holiday presents and baking! It looked like a tornado went through here for a good week. Of course it looks like that again now that we just had Ethan's birthday but more on that later...

Christmas Morning at Our House

Steve and I were so excited Christmas Eve night to get home and set up our living room for xmas morning! We hadn't put any presents under the tree so it was nice to have them there looking so festive and we set up the video camera on the tripod and got the coffee set up so that we could devote all of our attention to the munchkin. Ethan slept until normal time and didn't remember that it was Christmas when he woke up. When I reminded him he was very interested in seeing if Santa had left him any presents so we came straight downstairs. He was in awe of all the presents that had arrived overnight and didn't know what to do first! We weren't sure what his reaction was going to be but he was very subdued. He went to his stocking first and then opened this gift from our neighbors Alice and Bob. You can tell I still hadn't had much coffee at this point.



Santa brought Ethan a juice box and mini chocolate chip muffins. I think he figured it was the only way we would get the munchkin to eat anything for the morning.



On my trip to Huntsville last month I picked up some Auburn gear for the boys! Steve and Ethan sing the Auburn fight song at bedtime a lot so E has become a big fan.



Ho-hum. Christmas is SO boring...



We saved "The Black Train with the Remote Control" for last and we weren't sure how that was going to go. I thought for sure he'd be looking for it first thing but he didn't even mention it! He was so funny when he opened it. At first he didn't even recognize it! It was a good thing we left it for last because we of course had to set it up right away and it takes up a lot of space.

Ah yes...the remote control.

It was so frustrating to watch him play with this at first! There's a dial that if you turn it to the right it goes forward and to the left it goes backward. It also goes faster the further you turn the knob. He kept turning the knob back and forth, back and forth, really fast and the train was so confused! At one point he said it wasn't working very well so we had to try and show him how to use it. He's got the hang of it now.

I love this look of concentration. It's not easy being the young conductor.

I was trying to get Ethan to sit with the train or lie next to the train and he was doing everything but those things...of course!

Since we had the tripod out, we decided to take a family picture. Guess who wouldn't look...

This is Ethan putting his tools on his new workbench. Steve spent a good part of the morning putting this bad boy together and Ethan is very particular about where his tools go...as you can imagine.

It took us about an hour and a half to open all our gifts. Ethan wanted to open and check out each present he opened so that took a while which was really nice. He really appreciated each gift this year. As did we! It was a cozy Christmas morning at home.