Merry Everything! 2016

Santa came!

We had a great 3rd Christmas with Isaac. The best one yet!

On Christmas Eve we had a yummy lasagna dinner at Mommom's house (just like Mom-mom-mom used to make!). Isaac chowed down on lasagna, salad, and garlic bread and then declared, "I'm ready to go to church now." After church Ms. Ying tried to take some pictures for us in front of the festive altar, but Isaac was quite uncooperative. 

Mommy and her choir

When we got home, Mommy had plans of enjoying some hot cocoa and a sweet treat while watching some sort of Christmas show with Isaac, but Isaac announced that "hot cocoa is disgusting" and he'd prefer water and a cheese stick while watching a random episode of Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood. 

On Christmas morning everyone was excited to see that Santa had arrived! Although Isaac wasn't quite convinced he had come until Mommy showed him the picture of Santa delivering the presents. He was so excited to come downstairs and see the presents under the tree, but he was very patient while he waited for the dogs and chickens to be fed, coffee to be made, and then sang every word of "Happy Birthday" to baby Jesus (sadly, no video). Unfortunately, the video Mommy thought she was recording of Isaac "ooohing" and gasping as he opened each gift did not actually record, but she did get a few clips from her phone. 


Christmas Morning Video clips:

Happy birthday, Jesus!

Oooh!

Train Table!

Stocking Stuffers

More Stocking Stuffers

Isaac's big gift this year was a homemade train table that Mommy designed. She made an extending storage base to attach to an existing piece of furniture in the playroom and then a chalkboard painted topper. There was a miscommunication with the dimensions for the topper and it wound up being 5 inches too short, so that will need to be redone in the near future. 

Opening presents from Santa: 

reading the letter from Santa

After we opened gifts from Santa, Mommom and CharliePop came over for breakfast (Welsh cakes and cheesy bacon breakfast casserole). Isaac was so excited when they arrived, as caught on VIDEO.  We started breakfast with cracking open some Christmas poppers, just like they did on Peppa Pig. We told corny jokes and Isaac had fun putting on the mustache that was inside. After breakfast we opened even more presents! And then had an entertaining puppet show with the puppets Mommom got for Isaac. Videos HERE and HERE.

Mommom showing off the cowl Mommy made for her

Some selfies before we headed out. While taking pictures in front of the tree, Isaac was laughing and being silly, and then, completely unprompted, he held Mommy's face and gave her the sweetest hugs and kisses!

Then we headed to Mom-mom-mom's house and had yummy ham sandwiches, watched the Ravens game, played a silly game run by Daddy, and opened up even more presents. The puppet show continued here, and Declan and Isaac performed a Jingle Bells puppet musical, video HERE.

showing Kristen his "blue and red robot"

puppet show with Aunt Margie

puppet show for baby Kellan

pics from the saran ball candy game:

helping Uncle Tony roll the dice

  

  

  

There was an ongoing joke that when the boys asked Uncle Tony what his name was he'd say, "my name is choo-choo train", and they thought this was hilarious. At the end of the night they kept asking him:

goodbye hugs are serious business

On Christmas Monday we got to spend the morning at home playing with new toys. Even the chickens got to try out the new suet feeder that Santa brought them. Isaac had fun exploring with his toddler microscope, learning how to play his new percussion instruments (video HERE), and following his walking robot (video HERE). We also had some more sing-along time at the piano (video HERE). 

After some lounging, we got dressed and headed to Mommom & CharliePop's house for Ernst Christmas fun with Great Grandma Gloria and Uncle Tom. Isaac helped open presents and got some more goodies himself, including a cool Peanuts shirt from Aunt Felicia and a "buglite" from Uncle Tom. 

helping Libby open her gifts

  

Then it was back home for a quick visit from Poo-pa and more puppet fun!

We ended a busy day of social events with a nice dinner with the Wicklesses. Isaac made himself right at home. After dinner he dug into their percussion bucket as we played jingle bells and tambourines and sang song after song requested by Isaac. We'd shake and sing and as soon as we finished he'd say, "Sing anudder song!", sometimes requesting nursery rhymes, Christmas songs, Johnny Cash, and Wagon Wheel. We ended the night with Mr. Joe and Mrs. Ruthie sharing their very special train set with us. Isaac enjoyed looking through the bins and identifying the various buildings (and recognizing many churches), and had fun looking through the homemade tunnel at Ms. Ruthie. We can't wait to set it up in our own home! As we left he said "I want to go to their house again!"

Later on in the week we had Christmas with the Rests at Aunt Kim's house. Isaac had fun showing off the cool flexible race track from Mommom, and again playing with his puppets. He helped pass out presents to everyone, and then embarrassingly walked around showing off the money he opened in a card, "Oooh! Money! Look! I got MONEY!"

We tried to do a good bit of DIY gifts this year. In addition to the train table and cowl, we also made terrariums as gifts for Mommy's choir, Isaac's teachers, and all of the nieces.

We also received this card in the mail, that we think may have been meant for our neighbors as 108 North, as their light display is much more substantial than our simple white lights and lit up dachshunds. But it was still a very nice gesture!

We ended the week with a fun play date with Jarrett and Jodi! Isaac's first words when he woke up this morning were, "It's morning time! I want to play with Jarrett now. Is Jarrett here?" He was very happy to share his toys with Jarrett and chat with Jodi about his things. We waited too long for a photo op as both boys were pretty tired and not interested in "posing" for any sort of pictures by the end of the afternoon. 

And just for fun, while taking the videos off the video camera, Mommy came across these videos from last Christmas morning, back before he was talking!

New Kitchen - Christmas 2015

Christmas 2015