Christmas 2010

We had a wonderful Christmas this year! The boys both had a great time and really got into celebrating the holidays. Payton is all about Santa and Easton loves the lights!! The weeks leading up to Christmas though seemed to be exhausting! The week before Christmas, Payton had a musical at school. It was called a Barnyard Moosical! It was pretty cute! It was just Kindergarten and First grade. Then, the next day he had a party at school that I attended and Easton had special treats at day care. I had signed up to bring sweet treats for each party, so I did lots of baking. Including baking treats to go along with all of the teacher gifts. It gets so exhausting because by the time we get home at night and do dinner, etc and the kids to bed. I can’t really start anything until around 8:30!! So lots of late night (or middle of the night) baking, wrapping, cleaning, online shopping, etc! Also a week or two before Christmas my mom and I drove the boys to a park in Missouri that does amazing Christmas lights and to see Santa. They lights were awesome, but we had to sit in our car in a line for two hours until we got to the lights! We learned our lesson for next year to not go on the weekend!!
On Christmas Eve I made a big dinner of turkey, etc. I have done this for a few years now and whomever is around is welcome to come! I think I would even go all out if it was just the four of us. If you can’t use your fancy dishes on Christmas, then when can you use them!! It was a good time and everyone stayed and played some games with Payton. Then we picked out some goodies for Santa and went on the internet to track him. When Payton saw that Santa had already done all of Europe and was in South America he decided that he better hurry up and go to bed!
Bright and early on Christmas we were up and went to see what Santa brought! Paytons big Santa gift was a telescope and a puppy pillow pet and Easton got a little kitchen and a cow pillow pet. They both were so excited! We then spent the morning opening all of the wonderful gifts. Later that afternoon we went to my moms and spent the rest of the day over there and opened more gifts! Payton told me he was so lucky to get presents. I have been telling him that the most important thing about Christmas is not getting gifts, but giving them, so I had him get a gift for Easton and daddy and he just told me the other day that he felt happy when he got them presents. (Melts my heart!!)
Many of Eastons gifts were Elmo related! He loves Elmo right now! He also got lots of books. (Books seemed to be a theme for everyone). He really likes playing with this soft roll up piano that my mom got him. That little boy loves any kind of music. He was a lot of fun this Christmas! He gets so excited when he sees something he likes. He has been playing with his kitchen constantly and likes to take any of Paytons new presents!
Payton received quite a few books on astronomy. He also got lots of brain teaser like games such as a Rubiks cube and sudoko and a 3D puzzle that is shaped like an apple and some chapter books. Right now he is really into his tornado lab that makes a tornado in water! He also got a set that has chess/checkers, etc that he had been asking for. Can you tell he is my little whiz kid!!
Some of the highlights for Justin were some audio books that my mom and I had each gotten him. He always wants books but never gets them, so he was thrilled that we thought of audio books that he can listen to in the car.
All in all we had a wonderful holiday!! I then took Monday off of work so we pretty much spent all of Sunday and Monday in our pjs playing with new toys! It was great to be able to stay home and hang out with the boys with nothing else planned. Next week school starts back up (Payton has been at the day care with Easton over break), and we get back to basketball on the weekends. So a little break and then we are right back to our normal hectic lives!!