Christmas Day

Once again I neglected to get a family photo, but here is Brad & Camden on Christmas Day:

I have so many pictures to post! Brad surprised me with a weekend trip to New York City for my birthday, so I scheduled a couple of posts while I was gone. I thought I would be home in plenty of time to stay caught up with my blog and posting all of our Christmas activities. Well, we got caught in the Blizzard of '09 and had to stay 3 extra nights in NYC! When we finally got home, we were busy celebrating my mom's birthday, my birthday, then Christmas! Busy, busy, busy! Since Brad was off work for several more days, I spent as much time as possible with him & Camden, which meant very limited computer time for me. I have been busy editing and flagging photos for posts, and now I can finally get back to blogging. I hope you are prepared for photo overload! Ha!

I will start with Christmas Day. We had a relaxing but fun day at our house.

Camden is checking out his stocking (Yes it's a gift bag. A giant tv over the mantle, a working gas log under the mantle & a husband concerned with unobstructed viewing pleasure prevented me from hanging the stockings by the chimney with care. They ended up tied to the banisters of the stairs.) You can see Camden's old toys in the background. We quickly moved those to the playroom as he was more interested in playing with those than checking out anything new. Plus we needed all the room we could get for the Great Toy Blizzard of Christmas '09!

Cam decided a closer look at his stocking stuffers was necessary. Santa brought those cardboard building bricks. Santa and his helper had an awfully hard time figuring out how to put them together. Cam did like knocking them over after Daddy piled them up, for about 2 minutes. Then it was on to bigger and better things.

Like pulling ornaments off of the tree.

I got Cam this really cute cleaning toy set at Costco. I knew he would love it because a)he loves any and all cleaning products and b)I let him play with it in the store and he couldn't stop pushing the buttons. When you push their noses they say cute things like "I'm Playful Patty! No Wrinkles! Ironing, Ironing!" And "I'm Sweeping Sam! You missed a spot! Oh, that tickles!" Cam was pushing the buttons like crazy while I was trying to get those suckers out of the box. It literally took me 30 minutes to untwist-tie all 5 pieces.

Of course, Cam discovered it was more fun to twirl the broom around than to actually sweep with it!

Paula & Mike gave me this beautiful Arthur Court grapevine silver tray. I love AC and I love silver trays! You can never have too many silver serving pieces.

Brad, Paula & Mike (& Cracker's tail!) putting together Camden's busy town airport.

Camden's favorite part of the busy town airport was the umbrella. Go figure. He was content to watch Daddy open several of his presents.

Despite his unimpressed look, Cam really liked this musical table. I think by this point he was on toy overload.

This shopping cart from Nana was one of Cam's favorite toys of the day. He immediately took off with it on a trip around the house. He also loves loading it up, then dumping it out.

Cam thought the box was just as fun as the shopping cart!

Dad opening some of his gifts. He scored big on clothes, but I think his favorite present may have been a case of beer (Milwaukee's Best Light, of course!) from Paula.

Dad wrapped up Camden's DVD player so he could open it on Christmas Day. Cam was happy to see it again. He was really excited to see all the Elmo videos that GrandDaddy got him! It was so funny to see him recognize what they were! He immediately picked one out and handed it to me to put in the DVD player. It's amazing how quickly he picks up on things like this.

We gave Paula this cool red purse from NYC. She loved it! She immediately transferred all her stuff from her old purse, and was excited to have enough room to smuggle in snacks to the movie theater later that day.

Dad & I, enjoying some of his Christmas beer!

Brad, enjoying relaxing on the sofa after tons of present opening and toy assembly!

These are just some of the highlights of our Christmas Day. We all received many wonderful presents. For the first time, I was more excited about Camden getting presents than about what I was getting. We tried to be more modest in our gift giving this year, but of course, we still ended up with too much. I love all my presents, though, and I'm not giving them back! Ha! Our house now looks like FAO Schwartz, but I have been dispersing the toys around the house and packing up baby toys. I'm thrilled to be passing those things on to friends with new babies.

We also enjoyed yummy snacks and a delicious turkey dinner cooked by Paula. It was a real treat for me not to have to spend any time in the kitchen fussing over a big sit down meal. It was an even bigger treat for Paula & Brad to do all the dishes! Yay! That's what I call a Christmas Miracle!

We truly had a wonderful Christmas and we all delighted in watching Camden open and play with his many toys. I hope everyone else had an equally wonderful & special Christmas.