Christmas

Eric and I realized that this was probably our last Christmas for a very long time that we could go to bed early on Christmas Eve and sleep in on Christmas Day as we didn't have any bicycles to assemble and Sam isn't yet old enough to wake up at 4am excited for Christmas morning. We were really excited to take full advantage of this. However, since we stayed up late on Christmas Eve watching Tuesdays with Morrie and we were going to visit Eric's Grandma Hansen at noon with his parents... that didn't so much happen.

We set our alarm for 9am Christmas morning, which didn't exactly thrill us since it was 3am already.  However, the 5 year old in me woke up before that all excited that it was Christmas morning. It was kinda silly especially since I'd bought all my own Christmas presents so it wasn't like I had anything that was going to surprise me. But I was so excited to see how Sam reacted to his Christmas presents and to see if I'd done a good job with Eric's presents that I woke up early. I decided that the best Christmas present I could give Eric was a little bit more sleep, so I turned off my alarm clock and snuck out of bed.

Eric's family tradition is to make cinnamon rolls on Christmas morning. Since I'd already had my culinary adventure for the week I had Eric buy some Pillsbury cinnamon rolls that I could just throw in the oven. So I got those all in the oven and baked them so that at least I could wake Eric up to some yummy cinnamon rolls.

Once we were all awake and ready to start Christmas morning we came out to the front room and turned on our webcam so we could do Christmas morning with my family. Kind of silly, but it was more fun than just having the three of us opening gifts on our own. Plus, my family enjoyed watching Sam open all of his presents.

Sam's Christmas stocking ready to be opened

We have video of Christmas morning that I might try to convince Eric to put together for another blog post, but for now you'll just have to know that we had a good time. I had needed a new laptop so we decided for Christmas to get a new laptop for Eric and I would inherit his old one. Sam's big gift from us was a set of blocks, which has been used extensively by him since then.

This is Sam with a toy that he got that lights up and makes noises. Yeah, I regretted the purchase even before I made it through the checkout line, but he loves it :P

Once all the gifts were opened we started to hustle to get all dressed and things cleaned up before Mom and Dad Hansen came over. The house was still a mess when they got here but we enjoyed having them over for a minute and letting them see all the fun Sam was having with his new toys (and anything else he could get his hands on of course :P)

Then it was off to the retirement home where Eric's Grandma Hansen lives. Although she lives less than 15 blocks from our apartment it was the first time we'd made it to visit her with Sam. I'm so glad we went, Sam was quite the hit at the retirement home! At lunch he just looked at people and made noises and all the people just ate it up. He put on a very good show and we got so many comments from the ladies there about how adorable he was. Definitely a good way to make some people feel good on Christmas :)

One of the really cool things at the retirement home was this gingerbread village that the residents had built. You have to see it full size to really get how cool it was. But they had put this whole thing together with gingerbread and candy, it was spectacular!

After the retirement home we raced home to pack up our car. We were heading to Kaysville that afternoon and then on to various destinations after that. We wouldn't be getting back for a week and we had hardly even started packing. So we quickly threw things into suitcases and tried to at least slightly manage the mess in our front room. Then it was into the car and off to Kaysville!

We spent that afternoon/early evening at Eric's sister Katrina's house. It was a nice relaxing evening playing games and hanging out with family. We played a game called Imaginiff which was really fun. It's a game of really random questions that you have to answer about other players in the game. One example was "Imagine if Mike were a type of makeup, which of the following would he be?" and we all had to pick whether he would be lipstick, nail polish, concealer, blush or mascara. It was pretty hysterical to see the things people picked.

After dinner and everything was done at Katrina's we hopped back in our car to head up to my grandparents' house in Millville (just outside of Logan). It was a long day so we were happy to be done traveling and ready to go to sleep for the night. We spent some time visiting with my grandparents and my cousin Todd. Then we happily collapsed into bed.

Stay tuned for more of our Christmas break adventures coming up!