Satuday
Let's go back to Saturday...Christmas Eve day...Matt was scheduled to work a 12 hour shift that night, so his aunt and uncle moved their normal evening routine (Christmas Eve chili & cold cut sandwiches) back a little bit so that he could participate this year...we got out of town a little later than we wanted to, but made it to Conroe by ~ 1:45-2:00, and the whole gang got to the Gilmer's a little after 3:00 PM...we were shooting for sometime between 2:00 - 3:00, so we really weren't that far off, especially for our gang! I don't think that anyone stopped eating once we walked into the door, but hey...what's a Christmas gathering without continuous munching? Matt & I broke the gift-opening order tradition, which normally runs from the youngest to oldest, and opened our present first, since Matt had to leave to go to work - rule-breakers are we!
Uncle Randy's sister, her son, his wife & their two daughters came as well, and the two girls are just a little older than Kellen, 3 and 5 or 6. He had fun playing with them throughout the night.
At one point in time, PawPaw was bowling the kids, which they just loved! We ended up leaving around 6:30 or so, and went to look at Christmas lights before heading back to MawMaw and PawPaw's for the Hapes Christmas Eve routine...open one present, usually new PJ's, and the reading of the Bible Christmas story.
Kellen got an incredibly cute little stuffed puppy dog...but when I asked him what the puppy's name was, he thought he needed to ask PawPaw...he didn't understand that he could name it himself! I still don't think that the puppy has a name...other than "puppy" right now.
Sunday
Christmas morning....Kellen woke up pretty early (4:30AM) scared of something, but crawled back into bed with me and actually went back to sleep. I feel like that was a Christmas miracle all in itself! We slept in until almost 7 AM...another Christmas miracle...he rarely sleeps that late! When he woke up, he told me, "Merry Christmas" and "Happy Birthday Jesus." We're trying to make sure that he understands what this holiday is actually all about...but the true little two-year old self shone through when the next words out of his mouth were, "Open presents, Mommy!" I told him that we had to wait until Daddy got home from work until we opened presents, which I didn't figure would be too long, based on how long we had actually slept. Sure enough, we stayed in bed just talking and playing and a few minutes later, Daddy walked through the door.
He was the designated present-opener, and had a blast doing it!
I don't think that I've ever seen him, or any other kid for that matter, slide across a present like he did with his first one of the morning...a baseball set.
Elmo was, of course, a HUGE hit...Wait a minute...wasn't I the Mommy that swore Elmo would never be allowed in my house??? Oh well! I can tolerate him...But I haven't budged on the purple dinosaur (how annoying) or the Teletubbies (those things give me the heeby-geebies!).
He also got the Disney edition of Memory, much to PawPaw chagrin...he'll really enjoy this game, given how much he enjoys some of the Disney movies. I guess I'll need to introduce him to some of the others that he hasn't seen yet that have made their way to MawMaw and PawPaw's because they're on VHS (Little Mermaid & Hercules are two that I can think of off the top of my head).
I'm so glad that MawMaw and PawPaw were able to find a stick horse for Kellen. Matt and I had looked for one for him, but we just couldn't find one that we liked! This one is really cute, and it has wheels on the back! I've never seen one like this before...and Kellen loves it! He was riding the horse all over the house!
He just loves trains...so he got a Thomas the Train train set...and he played with it quite a bit over the weekend! However, he didn't actually want Thomas to pull the two cars that came with it! He would get very upset if we attached the cars to Thomas and would quickly pull them apart. He would let Thomas push the cars, but not connect and pull them...I'm not quite sure why?!?
As you can probably tell, it was just a lot of fun this year with him, as he enjoyed his presents and wanted to play with each and every one as he opened them up. We "stashed" them away as he opened them, and toward the end, he found the "stash" and remembered what he had opened earlier. Aunt Boo remarked that he had found his stash...he picked up very quickly on the terminology and yelled, "Kellen play with stash!" If the tone hadn't been what it was (read: terrible two temper tantrum), it would have been pretty funny.
Daddy got the Lord of the Rings trilogy, among other things, of course,
...and Mommy got a wonderful foot massager...mmmm.
We didn't go down to Channelview on Sunday like we normally would have...MeeMaw was actually staying with MawMaw and PawPaw, so we had Christmas dinner there in Conroe and just hung out at the house, which was actually nice and relaxing.
We watched the Polar Express with Kellen and then Sunday evening ended up being game night, which was fun as well.
Monday
Aunt Boo had planned a get-together with high school and college buddies for Monday, and the presence of "dork boy" was requested, so we stayed around for Monday as well.
Kellen enjoyed playing with the other kids, but got just a little jealous when they all wanted to play with his PawPaw. He made it quite clear that that was his PawPaw!
Whew! What a wonderful Christmas...two weekends in a row! Perhaps I should have blogged this in phases...I didn't realize it would take me quite this long to get all of the narrative and photos added...it's almost 11:30. Yikes! That's enough blogging for one night. Enjoy!
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