Christmas 2012

The weekend before Christmas Riley and I made cookies for Santa. I tried to make the process as simple as possible, such as buying sugar cookie dough, so that Riley was left with the fun stuff like decorating.

Do they make belts for 2 year olds? - because this girl needs some help.

Riley decided to add her own little flair to many of the cookies, but mostly wanted me to let her play with the sprinkles that are behind her. They included Christmas sprinkle favorites such as cows, dolphins, and dinosaurs.

This was after eating half a cookie - total zombie face. I don't think she even finished eating the cookie, but I had two. 

Finished product

On Christmas Eve, we headed over to my side of the family to celebrate. My brother, John, and his wife, Jodi, hosted once again. As mentioned in my last post, my dad didn't attend (and a few others were missing), but we had a pretty good turn out. 

Jesse asked me to delete the above picture, but seeing it's the only one of me that I could find over the two days I decided to keep it.

While I was busy snapping pictures and laughing with my family, my child was crying because the cat scared her. I was totally oblivious to it when I took this picture, but she made sure I knew that she was upset and then insisted that we find the cat. Actually, she became obsessed with finding the cat. Luckily, Nemo and Uncle Chuck were able to distract her for much of the evening. 

The kid's gift exchange was supposed to happen at 7:30, which was the time we planned to leave, so we didn't bring anything for Riley to open. Guess we won't make that mistake again since they decided the kids should open gifts at 6:30 instead. I distracted Riley by taking her into the basement to find the cat, but when we came back upstairs she got to try on the cowboy stuff that her cousin's James and Alex received. She seemed pretty delighted with it. 

EDIT: My sister provided me with another picture of me:

Yehaw!

 

Before we left, my sister, Judy, gave Riley and her cousin, Rocky, each a gift. Judy said she thought she might have mislabeled them and wanted to make sure they received the right one so we opened them while we were still there. Riley and Rocky each received the very same silver 'R' ornament. Oh, Judy.

Once we got home we selected 4 cookies to put out for Santa. I later found the cookie plate like this...

Christmas morning we opened gifts at our house. And when I say 'we' I mean Riley. Jesse and I decided to not exchange gifts this year so this was all her.

I took a video of her first view of the tree, but it's on the video camera I can't pull off of so you will just have to imagine the look of shock when she saw the tree with all the gifts. The initial expression of shock seemed to be focused on the very large giraffe her aunt and uncle bought her, but it soon changed to excitement when she saw the doll house we had all set up for her. 

One of two harmonicas she got from Santa

Oh my gosh... so many big things from other people. I had totally intended on following the "want, need, wear, read" rule of buying gifts this year, but Jesse did all the shopping on Amazon one day so most of her gifts fell into the want and read area.

After Riley opened all her gifts we headed to my in-laws house. I had a hand me down dress all picked out for Riley, but gave her the choice between that and staying in her new Christmas Jammies. She, of course, selected the pajamas and I might have too if mine were in better shape.

While these Mr. Potato Heads came home with us, several other gifts stayed at grandma and grandpas. We are going to have to do another toy and book purge to accommodate all the presents she received this year. And to think that her birthday is just over a month away. 

After spending the morning watching some cheesy Christmas movie about dogs that wasn't about dogs at all we headed home to put Riley down for her nap and I went to my dad's for the afternoon to round out the holiday celebration. It was another year filled with good times with our families and reminders of how fortunate we are.

Happy Holidays to all!