Archive for December 24th, 2009
and left the most ginormous Winnie the Pooh ever. With friends, even.
Sophie gave it a two paws up.
Come to think of it the rest of the animals were pretty happy, too.
Sam was entranced by oh, just about everything. This included the off-key harmonica concert AND the constant nagging to pleasedon’teatthepaper and leavethefreakinglightsalone and getyournoseoutofeverything, youstupiddog.
Emma? In her usual perch on the top of the sofa – surveying the commoners and refusing to set even one paw on the floor whilst all the craziness was going on.
Lily-cat? I always knew she was the smartest one of the bunch. She ran like heck when we came home and didn’t surface until later the next day.
As per our own newish family tradition we spent the Christmas holidays at home instead of traveling long distances (in separate directions) to see our families and, as we’ve done in the past, we went to our good friends’ house for dinner, Santa, and the gift kickoff.
A few Before pictures:
It was a madhouse. I think it was their biggest crowd yet AND they did it in a smaller house than last year. And Santa was real – well, it wasn’t her husband or mine this year so he must have been, right?
We got there a little early so the girls could hang out.
We tried to pose them in front of the tree. Yeah, right. Have you ever tried to get two 2 year olds to look sort of happy and in the same direction at the same time?
We thought food might help. Nah, not so much. Or maybe we just weren’t fast enough with it.
Ava was a little wigged out because there were soooooo many people there but she soon found a champion to look after her. They had a blast playing together – it was so sweet.
Santa came soon after. It was not pretty.
And yes, I felt horrible and swooped in to rescue her about .4 seconds later. I do have to say, though, that she was quite excited with the elephant that Santa brought her AND the cookie(s) I bribed her with to get her to stop crying.
Since we still had a long evening ahead of us we wrapped it up soon thereafter and headed home to tackle the mountains of gifts under our tree. Seriously, mountains. I will spare you the hours of video and the hundreds of photos – just know that she was all about the opening of gifts this year. She wanted to open hers, ours (the pitiful few we had in comparison), and the few we had still sitting around for others (yet to be delivered).
I said I’d spare you hundreds of photos. I didn’t say I wouldn’t post just a few.
Itching to get started:
Digging in:
Playing the blues on her new harmonica (with an appreciative audience):
And, mind you, there’s still more to come. Christmas Eve gifts are from Mama & Daddy & Family & Friends so Santa has yet to visit to stuff the stockings (yes, he did get a bit ahead of himself with Mama’s this year as seen in the earlier photographs) and bring the big Santa gift(s)…
Oh, wait. I almost forgot the After picture:
