Christmas 2010

And what a Christmas is was! Joe and I still can't get over how totally amazing Christmas is when you have children to share it with. We had just as good a time as Charlie and Lily, and trust me, they had a good time!

Christmas Eve kicked off with a surprise visit from Santa! He brought Charlie and Lily a special gift (a Mickey Mouse Clubhouse play set) and visited for awhile.

After their nap, it was time to head to Auntie Linda's for her annual Christmas Eve celebration. But before we could go, Charlie and Lily had to put on their special Christmas shirts :)

On our way to Linda's we stopped at the cemetery and brought Charlie and Lily out to visit Annaleigh. Lily looked right at the headstone, waved and said "Hi!" We were overwhelmed by the amount of thoughtful gifts that have been left for Annaleigh by our wonderful family. Evergreen trees, Christmas ornaments, and a beautiful glass bottle of origami stars made by cousin Michael. We are always touched to see how many people still think of our sweet baby girl.

Entertaining the family at Linda's.
Charlie and Lily got lots of great Santa gifts at Linda's, and had a blast visiting with everyone. They slipped into their Santa pj's before we left and good thing - they were sound asleep and ready for bed by the time we got home.

On Christmas morning, Charlie and Lily awoke to a little pile of presents from Santa.

New toys are a great thing to wake up to!

Santa also left them a special letter that Lily couldn't wait to read.

Then it was time to chill in their new chairs and wait for their guests to arrive. Grandma, Grandpa, Uncle John and Aunt Bec all came over to exchange gifts - and there were a LOT of gifts, mostly for two lucky toddlers. There were so many, in fact, that Charlie needed to take a break and relax with Anut Bec for awhile.
And once her perked up, it was on to more presents and some fun with Uncle John.

And there was no lull to be had! As soon as Charlie and Lily were done opening their gifts, Crackers, Granddad, Aunt Jill and Uncle Aaron arrived with more gifts! Crackers brought a play kitchen, and Charlie and Lily were very happy to see it (and her!).Once all the gifts were open, Charlie and Lily took a much needed nap before heading out to Nana's house.

There they received even MORE gifts and had fun visiting with Aunt Diane, Uncle John (a different Uncle John!) and cousin Adam. Hamming it up with Aunt Jill.
After that we had just one more stop to make - over to Grandma and Grandpa's house for Christmas dinner. There another round of gifts awaited Charlie and Lily. Spoiled babies! They played with some new toys and enjoyed some Christmas desserts. One of the highlights of our day was watching Charlie stroll over to the dessert table, reach up to snag a chocolate chip cookie, then walk away casually munching on it.

The night ended like this:
And I'm just going to leave it at that. (Sorry John, you had to know this pic would get posted...)

We had a fantastic, fantastic Christmas. Charlie and Lily spent today exploring all their new toys and recovering from the excitement. This afternoon a blizzard hit our area, so we're hoping that tomorrow we can take them outside in the brand new toboggans they received from Grandma and Grandpa.