Christmas Day 2012

So as seen in the previous post my family has the tradition to open presents on Christmas Eve, but we wanted to create our own family traditions so we decided we would open presents from family on Christmas Eve and then Santa would come and leave all of his presents for James to open on Christmas Morning. This has now become our official tradition. I think it's important for children to be excited about opening presents on Christmas morning, so even though I didn't really grow up with it I wanted our children to. James was up bright and early as usual as he came into our bedroom around 6 am. Somehow we convinced him to watch some TV in our bed so we could slowly wake up. So after about 30 minutes of TV we ventured into the family room to see that Santa had left tons of presents for James. He excitedly ripped into them and was thrilled that he not only got what he asked for (a dart gun and cars), but many other great things.

James and Daddy digging into the first package

James with he new Nerf dart gun

James' new Thomas train set

Love his face here

James with his haul from Santa

After opening presents we headed to my parents house to have a Christmas breakfast of pigs-in-a-blanket (James' request), scrambled eggs and mimosas. We decided to make a day of it and hang out there for the day so I could help my dad with preparing Christmas dinner. We traditionally have baked brie, smoked salmon, mushroom-brie soup and prime rib roast. Christmas dinner is always my favorite meal of the year. We had a nice relaxing day and played games with James while enjoying our mimosas. James wanted to stay in his PJs all day and since it was just the 5 of us (James, Mike, me and my parents) we went ahead and let him do so :-). All of the other kids were at their in-laws or had to work. As always the meal was delicious and we overate, but it was a really nice relaxing Christmas day.

James and Daddy playing games

Here I am working on the baked brie

James with his olive fingers

James got a new camera for Christmas from my parents
and here is one of his photos of all of us (a little blurry, but not bad)

James chowing down on the mushroom brie soup

Another photo by my boy :-)

Our delicious prime rib (James also took this one!)

This photo captures them perfectly :-)

Hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas! Until next year...