Christmas morning 2014

Somehow between the poor lighting and the fact that two year olds just don't sit still for long, most of my pictures from Christmas morning turned out a little blurry...but I did get these gems to share with you.  Don't mind the pants-less baby.  We're in the midst of potty training and sometimes less is more (especially where pants are concerned). 

This year I think we did Christmas perfectly.  In the past years we've done a LOT of driving to see friends and family but this year as Abby started to really understand Christmas and the whole Santa thing we decided that just like pants in potty training, less is more, and were able to convince both our families to come to our house for Christmas day. 

Christmas eve we spent in Wheaton with the McGrath side of Ryan's family.  His cousins from Alaska made the trip down and I'd never met them so we decided that was the place to be.  We had a ton of fun and since my family has always done our Christmas Eve open house in Freeport we've always missed the McGrath Christmas celebrations.  It was fun to spend some time with that side of the family, we don't see them enough.  The McGrath side has a whole gaggle of kids between the ages of 13 and 4 so there were plenty of kids to keep Abby entertained (it was just like having free babysitters!!).

We headed back home in time to get Abby to bed and greet Santa at the front door.  Abby was 100% prepared for Christmas morning and opening presents.  You see, I've realized that I've been creating a monster in the past few weeks.  I decided to do an advent thing for her and bought this Little People Nativity set (mine was actually from Target and slightly different). I wrapped up each of the little people and added a few little chocolate Santas to round out a total of 24 presents for Abby to open each day up until Christmas.  It took her just a few days to realize that she got one every day and she'd quickly ask for her present when we got home from the babysitters.  About 15 days into it I realized come December 26th we'd have sad little baby with no more presents to unwrap.  Gotta teach them early I suppose. 

Thankfully my present-a-day along with my Christmas Book-a-day advent projects Abby was a PRO at unwrapping gifts.  We woke up Christmas morning and did our own thing just the three of us at home.  All culminating with the big Santa present of this kitchen Ryan made her (blog post coming).  After that my parents and Ryan's along with Erin all come over and we did a fancy breakfast.  Abby snagged a quick nap and a present break while the adults opened our gifts and we finished off the afternoon watching Christmas movies, chatting and enjoying everyone's company in our PJ's. For dinner I made standing rib roast and yorkshire pudding only to be topped off with fresh apple pie (thanks Erin), mini pecan pies (thanks Ellyn) and Figgy pudding with whisky butter sauce (thanks Mom).

All in all I would say that Christmas was a complete success and I'm a little sad we've got 364 days until we get to do it all over again.