Picking up where we left off with the Christmas Eve post, the first person awake on Christmas Day was actually...Katie Wynn! She woke up at 6 o'clock on the dot, but not because of the excitement of Santa Claus. Just because that's around the time she normally wakes up. I brought her to bed with me and Matt and tried to get her to lay down for a few more minutes. By 6:15, she was jumping on the bed saying she was ready to get up. Again, not because of Santa Claus. This time just because we were at Mimi and Poppy's house and she was ready to get up and play. I asked her if she thought I should get up and see if Santa came and brought presents while we were asleep, and she got a little quiet and kinda excited.
After going downstairs to turn on the lights and wake up my parents and get the camera ready, I texted Matt to let him know we were ready. He came down empty handed and said she wanted me to get her. Upstairs, she was sitting up on the bed waiting patiently for me to come carry her down the stairs to see what Santa brought.
We had fun setting their toys out the night before! I'm trying hard not to go overboard with gifts for our kids, so they each got one big-ish gift from Santa and a few small things in their stockings. To be honest, I might not have even gotten Thomas anything if we had been with my nephews. It's not like he would've known any different!
I missed her first looks into the room, but she initially went to Thomas's toy. She had seen one of them before and knew what to do with it. I had to gently guide her into looking over at her new kitchen!
We showed her that there were goodies in her stocking too!
While she was excited about the Frozen and Mickey Mouse bandaids and even the big girl panties, I think her very favorite thing was her orange. She even stole the one out of Thomas's stocking too!
Thomas enjoyed his goodies too!
Not too long after we got down there, Parker joined us to see what Santa brought him.
And Ramer, the last to arise, was down a few minutes later.
After all the initial excitement died down, Katie Wynn loved going through everything in her kitchen and inspecting all the different foods and accessories.
Since my oldest brother, Nick, and his family don't stay the night, we have a tradition of going to their house bright and early for breakfast. It's hard leaving all the toys from Santa after the kids have just seen them, but Beth always prepares a delicious breakfast that we can't wait to get over there and eat! We pile into cars in our pajamas and make the five minute drive over.
We left there with full bellies and went back to our house. We always get together with my Dad's side of the family on Christmas Day around 2:00, so I knew we'd need to get naps in a little early. But when we got home, we each had one more present to open! Lala and Poppa left 4 presents under our tree so that we'd have something from them to open on Christmas Day. So fun!
Katie Wynn opened up some fruit that she can slice and cook with in her kitchen. She loves getting to cut the pieces apart!
Thomas opened up a new Sophie the Giraffe chew toy and he got straight to work chewing on it!
And just like with every other toy that was supposed to belong to Thomas, Katie Wynn tried to claim this one too.
As for us parents, Matt opened up the instruction manual to a new grill that he had already put together and used. I opened up this sofa table from Ballard Designs that I was so excited about and use every single day now!
We took these pictures so that we could text them to Matt's parents to let them know we'd opened their gifts. After I took my thumbs-up picture, Katie Wynn needed to take one too.
After opening our last gifts, we all took epic naps! Katie Wynn actually slept on top of me on the couch which never happens. Christmas morning is exhausting!
We always spend the afternoon of Christmas Day at my aunt's house. I took similar pictures to some I knew I had taken last year (on the left) for comparison's sake. Hasn't Katie Wynn grown so much??
Katie Wynn was being way too silly for pictures so Bren tried to show her how to sit in Matt's lap and pose. It didn't really work, but Bren looks cute!
A couple of blurry family pics with the uncooperative two-year-old.
My brothers continue to fight the [losing] battle of trying to win Katie Wynn's affection. They want her to like them so bad, but she just cries when they hold her! Even when they do fun things like try to get her to crawl through their legs...still tears.
Thomas seems to be ok with them though...at least so far.
Mom and I always talk about Thomas's evil grin. He has this smile where he wrinkles his nose and it makes his brow furrow and his eyes look a little crazy. I finally got a picture of it, below on the left. Excuse the snot, he had a bit of a cold.
Here are some random family snapshots from throughout the day.
Katie Wynn became obsessed with my cousin Natalie. She sat in her lap the whole time we played Dirty Santa and even let Natalie help open her gifts. Since then, she has asked for "Natanee" to come over and play about a hundred times. We will have to get her to babysit some time when she's home from school!
We play two rounds of Dirty Santa - once with the adult girls and then again with the men. (The little kids just get their own gifts to open.) This year, the girls were much dirtier than the men! I think I ended up bringing home my fifth gift.
My aunt works for Nike and receives all kinds of merchandise throughout the year from their "giveaways." It's way more than her family needs so she saves it up to divvy it up between all of us at Christmas time. She has bags full of everything from shoes to work out gear to hats and socks and gloves. In my family, there's a little bit of elbow throwing as we sift through and grab the good stuff in our sizes. :) (As if we haven't just opened gifts for two days straight!)
This year, thrown in with all the freebies was a spandex one-piece outfit. I'm assuming it's for a cyclist to wear. I bet my oldest brother, Nick, five bucks that he wouldn't put it on with a pair of neon orange shoes and walk out for everyone to see. I can't beleive he actually did it! I guess that just shows how cheap he is because of course he made me pay up! The best part of the outfit was definitely the series of cut out holes in the back. Can you imagine the tan line you'd get from wearing that!?
Now the joke's on my brother because I've put these pictures on the internet and it's gonna cost him more than five dollars to get them removed. :)
After seeing Nick in full body spandex, we decided it was time to go! Just kidding, but we really did leave shortly after that. Both kids crashed pretty hard that night. Good thing, too, because the next morning we hit the road for one last Christmas celebration...