A Look at Our Christmas Through Pictures

Santa ate some of our cookies and drank some of the milk we left him!

Santa did good this year!

Santa left Dora and Elmo stickers in Claire's stocking!

And a microphone!

She got a baby from mommy and daddy!

Claire checking out some of her goodies that everyone got her!

Daddy and his girl Christmas morning 2010

Mommy and Bug Christmas Morning 2010

Santa also stopped by Papa and Nana's house and left a kitchen for her!

A "pillow chump" from Uncle Kyle - it's 10x the size of a regular pillow pet and takes up half her room!

Playing in her new tent and tunnel!

Weebles Playhouse

Nana and her bug!

Papa and his girl!

Checking out her new puppy, skip!

Even after a long day, she decided to vacuum for me!

We had an amazing Christmas this year. Don't get me wrong, Claire's 1st Christmas will always be special and hold a special little piece in my heart but this Christmas was so much fun. Last Christmas she was 5 months old, sat there and tried to eat the wrapping paper and just played with the bows. It's such a change, this year she opened her own presents, she got excited when she say something she really liked and she wanted to play with everything right away. The look of excitement on her face is priceless and I know every single Christmas will be memorable in it's own way! Our traditions that we will carry over to future Christmas's are: reading the book, "The night before Christmas"- I read this book with my dad and brother every Christmas eve night, setting out cookies, milk and a letter for Santa, opening our stocking first. Even a few weeks before Christmas we started a new tradition is to take a name off the"giving tree" at our church. I think it's important for Claire to know the try meaning of Christmas and what giving is all about. I think my grandpa Linos would be proud of him, he was the who taught me a lot! This Christmas was so much fun. I love living close to both of our families so we can split up the day and be able to spend it with both of them. I know Claire loves seeing both sets of grandparents all in one day. This Christmas was filled with delicious breakfast and dinner, family, friends, faith, games and of course a ton of laughs! Can't wait to see what Christmas 2011 as in store for us!

So This Is Christmas....Christmas Eve 2010

Can you believe Christmas 2010 as come and gone?! I can't. It was such a whirlwind of fun, family and some amazing food. Our Christmas started Christmas Eve night, like it has for the last 10 years. We headed over to Eric's Grandma's house to celebrate Christmas with is Dad's extended side of the family. We get to see cousins, we normal don't get to see all too often. We had some great Grandma cooked food, amazing dessert and probably over 20 different types of cookies to choice from. My favorite are the chocolate covered cherry cake cookies...their to die for! After visiting for a little bit, we were ready for the "stocking game". The "stocking game" start 3 years ago. Eric's Grandma decided to stop doing stockings for all of her grand kids(12) and their spouse because it was getting to be a little much. She decided to buy different items and put everything into a storage container and let everyone pick some things. Well for us, it's turned into a game and the storage container went from 1 to 2 to now 4 containers to choice items from. We get a few minutes to check out the containers with only our eyes, no touching/moving items around allowed. Eric's dad figures out an order and then we all pick numbers and the fun starts. This year all 4 containers were on her pool table so we decided we would have to constantly walk around the pool table and when our name was called we would have to find something from where we were around the pool table at that point. Along with that rule, we also only have 3, yes 3 seconds to pick any item. If you take too long, you get the count down. Which makes you even more syntactic and nervous. All in all we did very well - 7 toothpaste, 5 shampoos, 1 condition, 3 dish soaps, 1 hand soap, 5 body wash for men, kitchen towels, lotions, tweezers, lip gloss, socks and some stuff for Claire (Gerber snacks, goldfish etc..) It was a great fun filled evening.

Here are some pictures of our evening:

Our little family on Christmas Eve 2010

Opening one of her gifts early!

Checking out all the goodies!

Claire loved carrying around everyone's bag!

Grandma and her grandkids and great grandkid (minus 8)

Claire carrying around her new baby, Carlee!

One of her favorite things to do at Great Grandma Laura's house - play on the pool table!

To read about our Christmas stay tuned...