Active Andersons: Part 3 - The fun of giving and receiving

We had some fun gifts that we gave and received. We bought a few movies for Taylor and Ryan to enjoy together (my family rotates so that each sibling buys for just one other sibling - Eric and I had Taylor and Ryan this year), and a webcam for my parents (of course, my dad also bought one for my mom, which at least confirmed that it was a good idea...). We also got a calendar for my dad that has funny grandparent stories (I'm not sure how it started but I've bought a day-to-day desk calendar for my dad every year for the past several years. I like it because he keeps it at work and will tear off a page every day and think of me, and it's something he uses), and a book called Funny, You Don't Look Like a Grandmother for my mom. Since Samuel will be their first grandchild it was fun to get them some grandparent gifts.

We got a lot of baby stuff — my mom even put together a stocking for Samuel!

We also got a stroller from my parents for Christmas.

There's a really cool demonstration of all of the cool features of this stroller on the manufacturer's website but unfortunately the makers of the site did the whole thing in flash (shudder) and so I can't post a direct link to the demo here, but if you are interested you can go to the website and click on products, the on strollers and then select the Helio (it's the second thumbnail from the right on the top) and then click on demonstration. I really like how lightweight it is and how nice and small it folds up while still being a very functional full sized stroller. Thanks Mom & Dad!

As Eric wrote about previously, we got the video camcorder from Mom & Dad Hansen in conjunction with Samuel's imminent arrival :) We also received several cute outfits, baby towels and baby blankets from Eric's brother Mike's family and our sister-in-law Kristen's family for Christmas. I'm really excited to start organizing everything and even more excited for Samuel to come now!

Eric totally surprised me this year, which is quite the feat us! We both get too excited about our surprises for each other and usually end up sharing them beforehand. However, Eric managed to save some surprises for me. See, I lost my little bag that I keep my jewelry in when we moved from our apartment in Wymount to our friends' apartment this summer. It had all of the jewelry in it that I wear regularly (which isn't a lot, but they were the few pieces that I really liked). On Christmas Eve Eric went to the mall and bought me some new jewelry so that I have some nice things to dress up with! I never thought I'd be the kind of girl who was excited by little jewelry boxes under the Christmas tree but I was apparently wrong. He had picked out a couple of things that were simple and beautiful (just my style) and I was really touched by his sweet gifts.



Thank you so much honey! He'd also bought me a pair of new headphones that are a lot nicer than the ones I'd normally buy for myself. They're really good at blocking out sound and really comfortable too. I had to promise though not to put them in my purse since we think the magnetic buttons in my purse are what previously caused the demise of Eric's headphones.

Sadly, I didn't have any really cool surprises for Eric like he had for me. He had made me promise not to get him anything really big since we'd spent a fair amount of money on some new suits for him a few months back. However I really enjoy putting his stocking together so I'd gotten him a few things that I thought he would enjoy, including some of his favorite books from when he was a kid (Goodnight Moon, Go, Dog, Go, Amelia Bedelia and the Baby, and Teach Us Amelia Bedelia). I also had some onsies made that obviously will be worn by Samuel, although they were really for Eric. They have this design on them that I created myself:



I think those could have been a cool surpise, however I needed Eric's help designing them since I don't know how to write Chinese, and I would have hated for him to open up his presents on Christmas morning and have onesies that say something like "I love dog food" instead of "I love my daddy". I made two for him, in different sizes so that he'll be able to have Samuel wear them for more than a couple of months. I was surprised that I was able to do it for a pretty reasonable price at MakeAOnsie.com.