Christmas, Christmas, Christmas

Christmas was kind of confusing to me this year. It felt like the celebration of commercialism as I made list after list of things to buy and get done. And we don't go to church, or really talk about religious things at home, but Christmas is the celebration of Jesus' birth... so, hmmm. Next year, when Lucas understands more, maybe we'll go to church to celebrate what is supposed to be celebrated on Christmas. I have never been bothered by this before, but I guess now I feel it's my responsibility to teach Lucas and Ellen about the meaning of Christmas. By the end, I remembered.... it's about sharing, giving, and spending time with friends and family. The Santa part creates some magical childhood memories, and goes along with the giving part, I guess. Next year I hope to focus more on the giving part with Lucas and less on the "what is Santa going to bring you" part.

We got the spending time with family part right. My sister, Ty and Mary were here before Christmas and then my parents. We all loved being able to spend so much time with them. And having my parents here for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day was special because it brought back so many memories for me. They both really get into the presents and then cooking dinner on Christmas Day, so they added a lot of excitement to the day.

A Christmas Eve tradition when I was younger was for my parents to ring a bell outside around bedtime. This was supposed to signal Santa's sleigh being nearby and that we should hurry off to bed. I remember being snuggled under my covers and looking for Santa out my window - so exciting! So we did that for Lucas this year. His face lit up when he heard the bell, but then he went right back to what he was doing : )

Before bed we were sure to put out some cookies and milk for Santa and a piece of celery for the reindeer. The cookies were on a plate, but Lucas took it upon himself to transfer them to this bag.

We have no extra room in our house to store gifts, so we had to do EVERYTHING on Christmas Eve. This was both fun and stressful, but once we got it all done, I loved the way it all looked. Santa didn't wrap the gifts this year since a lot of them needed to be put together and ready to be enjoyed. Plus, we saved paper!

I was in bed with Ellen in the morning, but set my phone for 6:30am so that I could go climb in bed with Lucas to see his reaction when he woke up. Lucky I did because at 6:50 he climbed right over me and started to walk into the living room! I asked what he was doing and he said he wanted to see if Santa ate his cookies. I thought it was funny that he didn't mention the presents. I convinced him (it wasn't easy) to wait for everyone else to get up and then we were able to go see what Santa brought for us. He walked right by all of the castles that I knew he would love and asked if he could open the first present that he saw. I think he was a little shy and unsure with all of us looking at him. It only took a few minutes to adjust, and then he was all about the toys. He played with them for 7 hours straight.

And Miss Ellen was just happy-go-lucky, as usual. She enjoyed the day, but for different reasons. There was chaos, noise, paper, and boxes... all fun to her.

After playing with his Santa gifts for a while, he opened the gift from Grandma and Grandpa - a big wheel!

And then he played with Ellen's pile of toys for a while...

And then back to the castles, knights and dragons...

While Tyson got some Christmas love from his daddy...

And then he moved on to the trucks...

While Ellen made her way through the mess...

More castle stuff...

And then they moved on to playing with the boxes : )

And then the costumes that Santa got on sale at Target after Halloween...

My parents were so fun to have around. Their dogs, Roo and Missy, tried to stay out of the way...

Later that morning Max and Ben came over to wish us a Merry Christmas.

And at some point Lucas lost his pants. I had such nice outfits picked out for both of them to wear on Christmas Day, but it just seemed to make more sense for them to stay in their comfy PJ's... or underwear.

Lucas helped to set the table... in his underwear. My parents love to cook, so we made a turkey, dressing and all of the stuff that goes with it. It was fun for me since that is how we used to spend Christmas Day... cooking and playing.

Again with the boxes... and the annoying peanuts.

But he was so cute that I didn't care : )

And then as quickly as it went up, it came down! All we had to do was tell Lucas that Christmas was over and he went to work taking everything down. The kid doesn't mess around. As far as he is concerned, if it's over then there needs to be no trace left in the house. On to Daddy's birthday celebration!