Merry Christmas!

We have had a great Christmas.  We enjoyed one of the whitest Christmases in recent history for Eastern Kansas.  We think we got around 10” overnight Christmas Eve.  We left early Christmas morning and were gone until late the next day.  When we got home the driveway was full of snow again, so it snowed quite a bit more after the large fall on Xmas eve.  Aaron was quite happy with the snow blower purchase from 18 months ago and the more recent decision to get an SUV with 4WD. 

 

We celebrated our Christmas on Christmas Eve morning before heading to exchange gifts at Aaron’s dad’s and then grandma’s.  Jenna got a new chair that is just for her (Portia may think otherwise and will probably get to catch a few naps on it if Jenna lets her).  Aaron brought it into the living room when we were ready to open gifts and Jenna got really excited about it and climbed right in!  She isn’t tall enough to climb into our furniture, so it is the first time we’d ever seen her do it. It made us quite happy with our choice of gift! 

 

At Aaron’s parents’ she got a few fun gifts, like a new baby doll and a fishing pole. The fishing pole came in a backpack with a small tackle box and a pair of sunglasses. We put them on her and she had fun walking around their living room with them on. I thought she’d throw them off immediately, but she wore them for a few minutes.

 

At Aaron’s grandma’s she got an awesome Little Tykes car from Great Aunt Vicki and Uncle Chris. She loves to climb in and out of it.  Since we brought it home, she loves to take rides on our hardwood floor.  She also got a few toys, clothes, and books from her other Great aunts and uncles and her Nanny Cain. 

 

I apparently didn’t take pictures at the rest of the Christmases, so sorry.  There are a few more pics at the end.

Jenna got a fun doll from Grammie and a neat homemade blanket, pillow, and bulletin board from Aunt Pam and Uncle Stan.  Grammie has lots of Santas decorating her house (I don’t remember the exact number, but she has counted them and there are a lot!) – Jenna loved to look at all of them and kept finding new ones all day.  We stayed the night and had a great time with my parents and aunt and uncle playing games all evening (ok, Aaron did NOT have fun with playing Trivial Pursuit, but we otherwise had fun playing games).

The next day we headed to my grandparents’ for the big Long Family celebration.  Even though I thought that Jenna’s name went into the family drawing (and would therefore just get one gift), she ended up making a killing and getting gifts from all of her Great Aunts and Uncles and Great Grandma and Great Papa.  Between all the gifts, Portia’s kennel, a Pack ‘n Play and high chair, we are lucky we were able to bring everything home!

We celebrated a few days later at my parents.  Jenna got some cute clothes, toys, a sled, and Pa Pa made her a beautiful step stool.  She loves to stand on it and can just barely see over the counter into the mirror. Adorable!!!

Helping Dad open gifts

All the loot Jenna got from Aaron and I

Gifts from Santa

Toys, toys, toys

Since Jenna just had a big birthday and got lots of great gifts, I decided it was time to swap out all those “baby” toys for her new “toddler” toys.  Yep, I pulled out every-single-little-itty-bitty-toy from her toy chest and special drawer in the living room.  I found out that we had about 1000 30 books stashed away, along with many, many stuffed animals, teething rings, and did I mention books? Here’s the after picture of her toy chest – yes, it is also after she had a fun afternoon of playing.  I admit that sometimes my living room is covered in toys! Luckily, it is super easy to put everything back in the chest (well, at least it is when you don’t have a toddler pulling toys out faster than you put them in! 

We also expanded her special drawer to two drawers. I think she was pretty excited. The table has 4 drawers in it and she is always trying to get into the other drawers (as you can see by the picture below – the top drawer is “not-for-Jenna”, but she really wants to get into it since that’s where her diapers and wipes are).  The left drawer is for books. I think we narrowed them down to about 10 and the right has a few random toys that will probably go back-and-forth between the toy chest and her drawer.