Baby Jesus and Santa Claus

Okay, so I officially stink at blogging! Between October and now our lives have changed so much that I hate that I haven't been blogging, so this is going to be another long one. So just grab your cup of coffee (as I write I am drinking mine, not sure when I became an afternoon coffee drinker, but I do LOVE it!) and join me!

The Holidays:
I loved Oak's age at Christmas this year. This was the first year that he seemed really into it and understood, not only the meaning of Christmas, but also Santa Clause.

This Christmas was unique too, in that we would be waking up at our own house instead of at one of our parents houses. I was so excited about creating our own traditions we could carry on throughout our life. One of my favorite things we did was the New Hope Railway Christmas train. It is a thirty minute steam train ride and Santa Clause comes and visits! It was super cold and rainy, but it will be something really fun to do each year!

So I wrote earlier about Oaks fascination (fascination is a slight understand statement) with Little People. We sort of took a hiatus for a while but then he came up with new ways to play with them. He would create stories and they would be the actors. He was like the puppet master and we were his puppets. He would tell us what to say and then we would say it. He found this game quite entertaining, yet I could only play people in little doses.

Around this time he also fell in love with the Christmas story and Jesus birth, so we were often using our little people barn and renaming our little people to act out the scene. He would say "Baby Jesus isn't here yet" and tell Mary and Joseph that there weren't any rooms. I was so excited to be in Target one day and find the little people nativity scene. I got it for him to get on Christmas, but if anyone knows me they know that if I am excited about a present that they get it way before they are supposed too. So of course he got it that day.

I am so glad because then the rest of the season we really got to sound time focusing on the Christmas story and the birth if Jesus. One night he lined up each of his people leading up to the manger and ran around singing "We are going to see the King, We are going to see the King." Of course he didn't totally get it and was still into making stories out of the "manger people". He renamed the wisemen, uncle Kevin, uncle ant and wiseman girl (one looked like a girl). He named the sheep Joshua and the cow Abigail after a book that we had read about the Christmas story. When asked at church who was with baby Jesus in the manger, he said Abigail and Joshua. The teachers were a little confused. He often wanted to do stories that made baby Jesus cry. I wasn't always sure how I felt about that one, but I think that Jesus would have been impressed with his creativity.

Taking Oak to sit on Santas lap was another great memory from Christmas. He told santa that he wanted a police officer, snowman and eww toys. Eww toys are basically anything that makes me go ewwwwwww like bugs, lizards and snakes and being a typical toddler, he wants the opposite of anything that I say and do.

We wanted to get everything on Oaks list and make this his best Christmas yet (I know this was just his third Christmas, but still we wanted it to be amazing).

Wow! I had no idea that being Santa clause was so much more fun than actually believing in Santa. Brian and I had an amazing time picking out presents for oak that we thought would bring a smile to his face. We might have gone a little overboard, but we were feeling quite sentimental with it being our last Christmas with just him (not that we weren't excited about the baby). We wrapped each little present so he would have a ton of things to unwrap on Christmas morning. Seriously, I think that he had like 40 presents to unwrap, most were little dollar store stocking stutters, but it was still so fun. And we had gotten him the things that he had asked Santa for only to be outdone...read on to understand....

Christmas Eve
We always spend Christmas eve at my parents house, which usually comes complete with much drama and excitement. This year was an exception, it was a little more dramatic than usual. long story very short, the police ended up coming to our house, which was awesome because that is what oak said he wanted for Christmas! Man, it put our little toy police officer to shame. He was awesome. He went up to the kids room and talked with them and gave them each sticker badges.

When we got home we watched the Polar Express and then Oak went to bed anxiously awaiting Santa's arrival.

Brian and I stayed up wrapping presents and watching all the Friends Thanksgiving and Christmas episodes!

Christmas Day

This Christmas was very unique too in the fact that we would be waking up in our own house and able to do our own thing and start our own traditions. I think that i wa most excited Bout this.

The look on oaks face as he came down the stairs was one of the most precious things I have ever seen. A mixture of awe, confusion and excitement. The first thing he noticed was that the cookies and milk were eaten and then he preceded to tell us that he heard Santa and the reindeer on the roof. So stinking cute! We then opened each present and played with each one, so this whole process took most of the morning along with a breakfast break. We spent the morning playing with all the presents and watching holiday movies. Brians hope that oak would get so tired that he would fall asleep in the midst of all his toys, didn't happen because our child doesn't ever shut down.

Our one request for our parents this year was to not get Oak any Little People because we were really burnt out on doing shows, however, we quickly realized that it doesn't matter what type of toys that he received, he just wanted us to entertain him. He created games like dark dark woods with his eww toys in which we were supposed to create stories about the dark dark woods and all the bugs and critters that live in them.

We then had brians family over for our first hosting of a Christmas dinner! I am not much of a chef, but I think that it went over well with just a few rookie mistakes.

The day after Christmas it snowed a ton, so Oak also got his wish for a snowman, which again shamed our little toy snowman in his stocking.

This Christmas is one of my favorite memories with my sweet family and I am so thankful to be back in this area and able to spend such sweet time with everyone.