Thursday, December 31, 2009

Christmas Day

Christmas Day was just as wonderful as Christmas Eve.  Lorelai woke up about 7:00 (we've been just letting her wake up when she wants to while I'm on Christmas break) and we fed her a bottle and headed into the living room to see if Santa came!





We showed her how the cookies and milk were gone and how the key was returned.  Then we read the story of Jesus' birth from the bible again before we started opening presents.  Then we opened Lorelai's stocking and all of her presents!  In her stocking she got a Larry (just like the one at Grammy and Pop's house), a monkey, and a wooden worm!  Some other things she got were "Your Baby Can Read", a cabbage patch doll (Reece), some clothes, and (of course) more books!




After opening presents, we ate breakfast, took a play break, and got ready to head over to Grammy and Pop's for brunch and another Christmas!





We got there around 10 and just played and snacked on all of the cooking food.  Bryan and Missy got there around 11:30 and we sat down for brunch (it counted as lunch for LL).  Yummy homemade cinnamon rolls, pigs in a blanket, and (my favorite) golden rod eggs!  After we ate, it was time for more presents. 



This part just seemed to chaotic to me!  It felt like everyone was opening presents all at the same time.  We got home later and I realized that I didn't even know about some of the gifts Matt had gotten because it got so crazy!



Around the end of opening presents, LL got really fussy and I realized that it was about 30 minutes past her bottle time (oops!) and that she was exhausted.  I fed her a bottle and put her down for her nap.  When she woke up, we took our family pictures, and then headed to my mom's for just a couple of minutes.











We stayed at Gigi's for about an hour and then headed home.  We were all pooped!  Overall, Christmas was wonderful and I can't wait to see how much she enjoys it next year!



Christmas Eve

I have been so excited for Lorelai's first Christmas, and I think she really had a blast.  She did WONDERFUL and got so many wonderful presents from her wonderful family!  **Warning**This is going to be extremely picture heavy!

Our Christmas really got started on Sunday, the 20th because that was our Cantata at church.  This is something that Matt has been working on for months and it's really one of his biggest days of the year.  I really think that this year he had the best cantata that he's ever had.  Everyone sang so beautifully and I was so proud of him.  He is wonderful at what he does and God is truely blessing him in his ministry.  Hopefully I'll be up there singing with him next year!


Usually, we spend Christmas Eve with my mom and that's when we have Christmas with her.  Well, this year I wanted to still do that, but I also wanted to be at home so that we could start our own traditions with Lorelai.  I didn't want to have to rush home from mom's and not have time to do any of our own Christmas stuff with Lorelai.  The solution?  Have Christmas Eve with mom and my house!  I was super excited becase I was going to cook a big ham, we would be more relaxed with LL here, she could stay on schedule, etc.  Then we got really horrible news - Victor got sick!  Lorelai was just starting to feel better from her bronchitis and none of us (Victor included) wanted to expose her to anyone and risk her getting sick again.  This meant that just mom was coming over.  I was still excited, but disappointed that Victor was going to miss out on it all. 


Mom got off work early (around 11) and came straight to our house.  I had been cooking a ham (first time!), mashed potatoes, and asparagus.  It was my first time cooking asparagus and ham, but they both turned out fantastic!








After we ate, it was time for gifts!  Of course, most of them belonged to Lorelai (as they should) so we all sat around and helped her open her gifts!  She was still feeling a little under-the-weather and didn't really have any idea what was going on.  She wasn't too keen on opening presents and she just wanted to play with them as they were unwrapped.  I think she got a little overwhelmed because she'd start playing with one thing and then we'd open another thing and hand it to her and she never got a chance to really look at any one thing.  Some of her favorite gifts: book!  This girl loves books, her crazy new hairbow, and her grocery cart!  Mom did an awesome job picking out the grocery cart for her and she LOVES it!

Her crazy new hair bow!

Reading a new book.






Standing all by herself like a big girl!






Matt got a smoker (yummm!  ready for some awesome food!) and I got a new camera.  Finally!  My other one was getting to be so horrible.  It wouldn't take pictures some times, most of the time the pictures were blurry and (worst of all) I had a hard time getting my computer to find them to put them on the computer!  It would try to bring up old, random pics instead of the ones that were on the camera.  ???  So I was super stoked to get a new one!





After we got done opening presents, it was time for LL to take her nap.  All of those gifts wore her out!  Mom left to go take care of Victor and we spent the rest of the evening at home.  We had planned to bake some cookies for Santa, but LL ended up sleeping from 3-5 because she was so tired, so time ran out for baking cookies.  We'll make sure that doesn't happen next year!

Reading "The Night Before Christmas"





After her nap we ate dinner, played with our new toys, put cookies (oreos - haha!) and milk out for Santa, put our Santa key on the front door, red the story of Jesus' birth out of the family bible, read "The Night Before Christmas" and headed off to bed!  It was a great first Christmas Eve for our baby!  Hopefully next year she won't be sick (and neither will Victor!)


Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Game Night

The Friday before Christmas (the day before we found out that LL had bronchitis) we got together with Clint and Sarah to have a game night!  We used to have game nights with them allllll the time, but we haven't had one since I was still pregnant with Lorelai! 

I was super excited because we really haven't seen them much since Lorelai has been born and I was excited to spend some time with them again.  They met us at our house around 5:20 and we all rode together to Smokin' Pig.  We had a great meal and then headed back to our house because we had to get LL down for bed before we could play games.

After she was down for the night, we (of course) had to take some pictures:












Matt tried to be romantic and dip me, but with sock and hardwood flooring, he ended up dropping me instead.  And, of course, Sarah was standing there with a camera.  :)





After picture taking, we let the game time begin!  We played Catch Phrase (the singing version), Mad Gab, and Loaded Questions.  Here's a video of us playing Catch Phrase - it's pretty funny!  We had such a wonderful time and we even woke LL up a couple of times laughing so hard!

We had a blast and I hope we start doing this again more often!