The Day of Presents...I Mean Christmas!

Christmas morning. We slept until around 9 am. I think this year and maybe next year we'll be able to do that, but after that I think we'll be doing the "as soon as it's light out" Christmas mornings.

Before Natalie opened presents, she requested a story. She loves books and particularly loves this book because one of the stories has a lizard in it.


After the story we made breakfast - the usual toaster Kashi blueberry waffles. We then went to the couch and I had her open her first gift. This gift came from her friend Maggie (Diana's little girl). She loves shoes (or slippers - she doesn't know the difference). She loves monkeys (monkey heads on the slippers). And she now loves her monkey shoes! Thanks Maggie!



After the excitement of opening her monkey slippers, she thought she'd take another break and read again. This time by herself in her reading corner. It was as if she didn't know she had more presents to open!


So I pulled her away from her books (What? Bad mom!) and "made" her pull out her presents in her stocking. Because of her love of toothbrushes, she got a Barbie toothbrush. I think she was confused as to why there was a lady stuck to her toothbrush. Oh well. Grandma Narducci put a Hello Kitty toothbrush in her stocking and she seems to not be as afraid of it.


Here's Mike opening up his stocking presents. Lucky guy. He got Listerine and various other hygiene related gifts. It seriously made him wonder if he had a hygiene problem and that I was gently trying to tell him about it.


After stockings Natalie opened a gift from us that was actually wrapped in paper. She hasn't been excited about wrapping paper in the past, but this time she finally enjoyed ripping it off. So the next (long) series of photos are of Natalie opening her gift. I really should have just videotaped it. Too late.









They are hippo hand puppets. She LOVES hippos thanks to Baby Einstein. And like I thought, she loves these puppets. They actually are bath toys. You fill up a little bladder inside the puppet with bath water and squirt it out through the mouth. We haven't used them in the bath yet, but I'm sure she'll get a kick out of them!






This is Natalie telling us what a Hippo says. She also kisses like this when we tell her to "give a hippo kiss". This also came from the Baby Einstein video. She is copying a little girl who opens her mouth wide like this as she imitates the hippos in the video.


Mike is now opening his one and only gift from me with the help of Natalie now that she likes opening presents. So exciting! He never wants anything. Whenever I do buy him something - because he seriously doesn't want anything - he usually isn't excited about. So this year I decided to not buy anything...until I saw this. I figured he'd at least kind of like it enough to warrant it's purchase.


Because of it's size and packaging, I had to fill the box I wrapped it in with magazines to throw him off.



It worked! It was a surprise! He watched it that morning. Mikey, he likes it!


Stunning.


Even more stunning, I know, is this picture of me with my new purse! Yeah! I think I am now at a point that I can leave the house without a HUGE diaper bag to carry. This purse looks like it is the perfect size to fit a few necessities for Natalie in it. Thanks Mike.


I also received this funky apron and hot pad from Diana. Love it!


We also gave Natalie the shopping cart we bought for her for her birthday. We decided to not give it to her (she got way too much already) and were going to take it back but realized that it might be a good Christmas present. It was! She even helped put it together. She loves tools. I think I'll surprise her with a tool box one of these days.



Later that afternoon Alisa and kids came over for a bit. They then went to Lee's house and we went to the Narducci's. Here is Natalie opening one of MANY gifts she was given that night. Lucky girl!


Well, one of the gifts that I put on my wish list was a DVD player. Ours broke forever ago. We've been using this cheap portable CD player hooked up to our TV to play Natalie's videos. It works most of the time... Well I got my DVD player! Yippee! So now Natalie has her own portable laptop DVD player. Seriously. She couldn't have it any better.

Well we had an awesome Christmas. We hope you did as well! Sorry for the huge amounts of pictures. I couldn't decide which ones to leave out. It's too easy to take too many pictures in this new digital age. And to share them is even easier, thanks to blogger.com.

To end this long post, here's a video of Natalie having some fun. This was taken this past Sunday. She asked for more, so it can't be considered abuse, right?

'Twas The Night Before Christmas

Inspired by the Aidukaitis' favorite Christmas movie A Christmas Story, Lee's family's Christmas Eve tradition is to go to dinner at their favorite Chinese restaurant. Even though they don't cut a duck's head off or sing "Fa, rah, rah, rah, rah" it is still a fun tradition to be a part of.

Here are photos of everyone in attendance - except Natalie. I forgot to take a picture of her fast asleep on a nice bed Mike made for her out of a foam mattress and our shopping cart seat cover.

(Spencer will love that I posted this close-up picture of him. He refuses to let anyone take his picture but I was able to snap this one before he could turn around. You'd never know otherwise - I think it looks like he posed for it!)

After dinner we went to the Narducci's to participate in their family's traditional Christmas Eve gift exchange. With our gifts in hand we all sit in a circle while someone reads 'Twas The Night Before Christmas. Whenever the book says the word "and" we pass the gifts to the left until the story ends. Mike and I gave the same gifts this year. Both gifts contained 4 boxes of pencils (an inside joke that I won't explain here), a Joy to the World VHS tape (extra tapes our ward purchased forever ago that they were trying to get rid of...really does anyone own a VHS player anymore?) and a $25 gift card (both given to me for Christmas by my boss to restaurants that have no vegetarian entree selections, and therefore are pretty much worthless to us). Needless to say, our gifts at first appeared to suck until the lucky recipient opened the VHS tape to find the "valuable" gift card inside.

We always have fun on Christmas Eve. Natalie enjoyed running around the inside of our circle, grabbing presents as we passed them wanting to open them all. But, not to our surprise, Grandma Narducci bought Natalie her own gift to open that night. It was 26 little board books, one for each letter in the alphabet, that came in the cutest square box with a lid and carrying handles. Very Cute. We came home with some pretty cool gifts, as well. I got a harmonica (I love harmonicas!), a book and some epoxy. Mike came home with pasta, pasta sauce and bread sticks.

Unfortunately the night had to come to an end. We would have liked to hang out longer but we had to get Natalie home and prepare for Santa's arrival. We also didn't want to risk having Santa skip our house because we were still awake!

A True Christmas Gift

My sweet, healthy, and beautiful baby girl.

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!

We've done a few things this year to bring the Christmas Spirit to our home and family. Besides decorating the inside of the house, we also put up Christmas lights on the outside of the house. It was so fun to do that this year with Natalie. She loved being outside with us, touching all the light bulbs while trying to help out.


As soon as it got dark we went outside to check out our Christmas lighting masterpiece. Natalie was fascinated with our vintage plastic snowmen and Santa Claus graciously given to us by Noni - Mike's grandma.


Here's what the house looks like. We usually put red and white lights around our palm trees to make them look like candy canes, but we decided it was too much work. A little boring I know. Oh well, maybe next year!


Last Wednesday we went over to Mike's parents house for our annual gingerbread house decorating party. Natalie enjoyed putting icing on the wall of one of the houses, I mean, she enjoyed eating the icing.


And today we put the last felt piece on our advent calendar. Mike's mom let us use hers this year since she knew Natalie would enjoy it more than the adults would at her house. We're definitely going to make our own. Natalie LOVED it. She even carried around the little kitten for a couple of days.


We wish you all a very Merry Christmas! Tonight we're off to eat Chinese with Lee's and Alisa's families. We'll then going over to Mike's parents for our annual gift pass-around. I love Christmas Eve almost as much as Christmas Day!

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!

Promise Kept

Here's the video of Natalie doing Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes.

You won't mind if I eat her now, will you?

My Daily Indulgence

I have many of them but today I'm writing about a blog that I check daily. She is a great writer - very witty. Anyway, the daily post was pretty funny and I wanted to share it with you. Just click here to read it. I especially liked her story because I can absolutely see experiencing something similar to this with Natalie in just a few years...my little princess!

Christmas Clementines

During this time of year, Clementines - the yummiest oranges ever - are for sale. When I buy a box of them it only last a few days...especially now that Natalie loves them, too. She ate so many of them last week that it gave her a really bad diaper rash! I think she was eating at least 5 a day.

Here's Mike helping Natalie peel one - I mean, here's Mike picking up the peel as Natalie peels one on her own.

Mmmmmm...Deee-licious!

If you haven't had them yet, you better go buy some before they are all gone.

Christmas Spirit

The Christmas season is my favorite. I love decorating the house with all my Christmas decorations. I don't have many, but what I do have fills our home with the Christmas spirit.





Last Sunday we celebrated the annual Narducci Family Christmas party. This party includes Noni (Grandma in Italian), her three sons Luke, Anthony, and Frank, and their families. What a great family I married into. We always have a great time when we're together!


At the party we always have a semi-white elephant gift exchange. I say "semi" because you still have to make the gift kind of nice and it has to be around $10, too. Because of our small budget now that Mike's in school, we graciously gave gift cards that we've almost used up, combining multiple cards to get to the $10 requirement. Rad gift, I know. Really more on the side of "semi" than "nice". Feel free to copy it for any future white-elephant parties you may have to attend. Anyway, we all really had a great time.

Here is Natalie enjoying a candy cane while rocking on a wooden horse belonging to Aunt Patty. She LOVED the horse! I really need to get her one.


After the gift exchange there were real gifts passed out to us from our Aunts and Uncles. Natalie actually enjoyed opening the gifts more than I thought she would, paying particular attention to the bows.


I can't believe Christmas is just around the corner. I have a busy week ahead preparing for the big day. I hope you are more prepared than I am! If not, good luck!