Christmas

What a Christmas! For Annalee, it was her first Christmas really caring about Santa Claus and being able to anticipate Christmas morning. Which meant it was the first "typical" Christmas for Nathan and I as parents, dealing with that anticipation! Annalee kept calling out to us from her bedroom long after she was supposed to be asleep, saying things like "Santa is going to fill my stocking?" and "I don't want Santa to come in my room and wake me up." I assured her that Santa wouldn't go further than the tree, but her excitement kept her up until 10:30 p.m. anyway. After she finally dropped off, Nathan went to work on the big gift: a bumble bee toddler car, some assembly required, of course. I took great pleasure watching him pour over the instructions and then start assembling. Turns out the wheels had to be put on with a hammer, so he had to take the whole thing to the basement and try not to wake up Annalee.

When he finally got it together (very well, I might add) we sat down and did the stockings. Again, this was the first year we've really made a big deal of stockings on our own. In the past, we either did stockings at my parents' house or didn't bother with them.

All in all, we didn't fall in bed until 2 a.m., so we were very grateful when Annalee let us sleep until 7:45! She didn't remember it was Christmas until Daddy asked her about it while changing her diaper, and then she was so excited! She'd been asking me every day "should we open the presents?" for two weeks, and that day was finally here! I made her and Daddy wait so I could go ahead of them and video Annalee's reaction to Santa's gifts. (I didn't post the video here because Blogger hates my camera.) Upon spotting her car she didn't have the uninhibited glee we were hoping for--in fact, she didn't really know what it was. But after we demonstrated what she was supposed to do she got in and zoomed around the house for the rest of the morning.

Grandma and Papa 'Beek showed up just after 8:00 and we opened stockings and the rest of the presents.
It was such a fun morning. Annalee plopped down by Papa for help opening her stocking and presents. She was so amazed as more and more things kept coming out of that sock! We each got Dutch chocolate letters (our first initial) as we do every year to celebrate Dad's Dutch heritage. Annalee also got a little cat that rolls around like a zhu zhu pet. And we got lots and lots of presents. Most of the ones I had gotten for us were things we needed anyway, like slippers and pjs. But there were so many gifts from everyone that we got quite a haul.

We stopped halfway through present opening to have orange juice and hot cinnamon rolls.

I think Annalee was drunk on sugar.

After presents Grandma and Papa went home for a few hours. Mommy and Daddy turned on a movie for Annalee on the computer and went to bed! We spent most of the rest of the day like that. I got the ham ready at 12:30 and took the rolls out of the freezer to rise. At four I started the rest of the food, and Grandma and Papa came back over to eat at 5:30.

Despite my weird face (I was making weird faces in every picture of me taken that day) it was really good! Oh, and ignore Annalee's weird face too; she loved everything. We had ham with a plum glaze I had made from my homemade plum freezer jam. I'd also made rolls, peas, gravy, apple turkey stuffing, and cranberry juice. Dad had brought the mashed potatoes and "pink stuff" (jello salad), both his specialties. We also had eggnog which I pretended I didn't want. (I've got to go get some Lactaid eggnog before New Year's Eve!) It was a huge feast, even though I hadn't meant it to be. No one even had dessert, we were so full! After dinner we played Apples to Apples, and Annalee almost won. (Kind of sad when the person who can't read and is throwing out random cards from her hand does better than most of us who are actually putting a lot of thought into our plays.) What a Merry Christmas!