Jingle Bells

I know I have some catching up to do, so here is the first in hopefully a few entries to highlight the past several months:


As can be expected with a 3-year old and 20-month old, Christmas is a mix of excitement, chaos, meltdowns, and that magical feeling of anticipation.  And that was just Christmas Eve.

Christmas Eve found us at Great Grandma Kruepke's house with about 50 other people.  The boys enjoyed playing with their cousins and of course got excited when it was their turn to receive gifts from Great Grandma as well as their gift exchange person.  However, it became a late night for them and we paid the price on Christmas day...


This was the first Christmas where Nathan was an active participant in the gift opening.  Cameron tore through his stocking and then "helped" Nathan go through his.  This was one of the few times where Cameron was more impetuous than Nathan.  Interestingly enough, the highlight of the stockings were the little boxes of raisins they each received.


We asked Santa to bring each boy only 3 gifts to represent how Jesus received 3 gifts from the wisemen.  No, the boys did not get gold, frankincense, and myrrh like Jesus.  Instead they each got a puzzle (a very popular toy in our household - more on that when I blog about our trip to Atlanta), a pair of slippers and a Tonka truck.  One of the last gifts opened was from us to Nathan.  We were very excited about it because for the weeks leading up to Christmas, Nathan would constantly talk about Cookie Monster.  Greg found a singing Cookie Monster doll on Amazon for a great price so it was a last minute purchase.  Nate started opening the gift and we figured he would be really excited.  Wrong!  As soon as he saw it was Cookie Monster, he dropped it and ran off crying and screaming and for the rest of the day would run away and cry if he saw Cookie Monster.  Not what we expected, but it definitely was the one thing I will remember about this Christmas!  It took several days, but he did eventually warm up to the doll and will actually push it's belly to sing the song.



Christmas definitely is a much different experience once you have kids old enough to understand it.  All the hiding of gifts, wrapping them at night (we fortunately wrapped them over several nights so we didn't have to stay up late on Christmas Eve doing massive amounts of wrapping), helping the kids write letters to Santa and his reindeer, answering questions about Santa and how he fits down the chimney, etc.  It's a lot of work, but it sure is worth it when you see the kids' eyes light up on Christmas Day.


Pictures and maybe even a video of Nathan opening his Cookie Monster doll will be posted later...