A Busy Christmas

Christmas Eve started with me and the boys visiting my friend Erik, who was visiting from the East Coast. He was in town staying with his parents, so I thought I'd drop by with the boys since Bryan had to work that day and we all went to lunch at a pizza place in town. Ethan loved wrestling with him, and Austin took a little bit of time to warm up. Pretty soon he was used to Erik, but didn't want "a piece of him." (That lovingly means wrestling in our family).

Ethan, Erik, and Austin at Massimo Pizza.

That evening, Bryan and I let the boys open their stocking gifts. During the afternoon, I had been working on the last of two hats that I crocheted for Tyler, and had pulled out all the hats that I made a year earlier so I could sort of get a measurement for the size I needed. Austin took to this girly, glittery blue hat that I obviously hadn't tied off and LOVED the way the yarn moved. He called it his "hair." That hat doesn't go away in any of the pictures below....on Christmas Eve OR Christmas at our house. It became his "hair" hat. Here he is making it move.

Ethan holding his slinky for me to take a picture of. They loved their microphones and slinky's best. OH...and can't forget the Tootsie Rolls....along with sour gummy worms, those are the boys' favorite candies.

On Christmas morning I had a chubby face (Austin) peering into my covers at 6:45am telling me "wake up mommy!!! open presents!!!" Bryan was oblivious since we'd gone to bed late and unfortunately my side of the bed is the closest to the door so I had two mini men pleading with me to get up so they could open their presents downstairs. It was torture for them as I made coffee before we opened the gifts. They were raring to go. The cute thing was that Ethan loved watching Austin open his gifts just as much as he liked opening his own.

Here's Austin's favorite gift. An electric guitar. Yes, it does play the same tune over and over, but it's really not that annoying...yet. The cool thing is there's a sensor where you'd strum it, and it plays the tune when it feels your hand there. Amazing how they make toys these days. So here's Austin in his "hair" hat strumming his guitar so he can be like "Mr. Cody" at church (their music leader in sunday school).

Then we proceeded over to my parents' house where the boys napped and eventually Riva, Will and their clan came over. We had a yummy dinner, then Dad read the Christmas story. Mikayla beautifully led us in singing Away In A Manger (and remembered all the verses!!) and the kids clamored to be on Grammy's lap. Notice the Michael Jackson glove in the picture above? Well Austin adopted one of Mikayla's gloves to wear the rest of the night. Did I mention that he's into gloves, too? Well, that's another love of his. We actually had to bring one of my dishwashing gloves with us to San Diego in the car because he wanted to wear it during the trip. Don't even ask cuz I don't know.

I LOVED this. Dad played some Christmas songs (with the help of many hands) and we all sang along. What a sport you are, dad!! I think I'd be irritated and running for a silent room if I had that many hands trying to help me out with something. Yikes. As it was I played Santa during gift opening time and managed to get ultra-irritated at my children (one in particular) who wouldn't stop touching the gifts that weren't theirs. I even caught Austin opening several of them. "PATIENCE, Cara. Breathe......think about what's really important here..."

And this would be Ethan's favorite gift of all time. Gram and Gramps bought all the kids a bike for Christmas. Each one went down in size. It was pretty funny to see this little line of bikes decreasing in height. Lynnea's was a little rocking horse. Austin had a tricycle/bike with training wheels. Go Dad for assembling all those things!!!! Kudos. THAT takes patience I tell ya. Thank you, mom and dad for being who you are and for all the love you give me and my family. No words can express how much you mean to me and how much your grandchildren and children love you. We had a special Christmas at your house.