Catch up #3--Christmas 2010

Wow this one is embarrassingly late. But after Christmas we got super sick for almost the entire month of January, then we were preparing for and celebrating Liams 1st birthday...and I am sure you can see why its late!

We had a WONDERFUL Christmas!! This was the first year that we stayed home with just our little family for Christmas! Our reasoning was that 1. I had just been home to Washington with Liam for Thanksgiving 2 weeks before we would have left 2. driving wasn't an option because of the weather (one year we almost got stuck and would have missed the beginning of Richards semester) 3. Plane tickets were insanely expensive and 4. in our 5 years of marriage we had never had a Christmas with just us so we thought it was high time to have at least one! :) It was SO much fun! While we missed our families terribly, but it was fun to do our own traditions as our own "real" family. 

Last year we got a tree at the after Christmas sales for SUPER cheap and I am so glad we got it! It isn't really nice, but its pre-lit, baby proof (Liam never pulled it over and hardly touched it. MIRACLE), cheap and it works. Liam loved the tree. We bought dollar store plastic bulbs so that Liam could play with him and he did just that! All the bulbs from 30 inches and down were almost always gone because he kept pulling them off and playing with them! 

Christmas eve we finished Christmas shopping, getting stocking stuffers and getting all ready for the big day! Also, in my family Christmas eve we have a huge nice dinner so we invited some of our friends over to have a dinner of ham, rolls, salad and all the other yummies that come a long with it! It was really fun and dang good! Another tradition that we wanted to carry on from our families was letting the little ones open one present before bed and it's always new jammies. As soon as he went to bed the magic started! :) We wrapped all his presents, cleaned up all the wrapping mess and made the house all Christmas-y! It was so much fun to be on the other end of things and imagining him waking up the next morning to see all the presents! 

The proud parents after all the decorating and wrapping!!! Got to love our cheesy pose! :)
(I promise my arms are not that fat normally! I accidently pushed them hard into my body for my picture and they flattened out! Trust me, they look totally normal haha)

One of my favorite parts of Christmas is when all the lights in the house are off except for the Christmas tree lights with presents underneath. It's just so magical! 

Heres a quick video of getting Liam up in the morning and him opening his first few stocking presents. I spared you the bore of having to watch the 1 hour + video of him opening all his presents. Yes we taped the entire thing! :)

He loved all his toys! There were some pretty awesome ones that he still loves. Mommy and Daddy also got some neat presents as well (like my 1 terabyte external hard drive!! For a person who fills up my 8 gigabyte camera card almost monthly, it was a must. My computer had no more space on it because of all the pictures I have) ! :) After we opened presents and he took a nap (all that fun was overwhelming and tuckered him out) we went to our good friends house and had an awesome brunch with some of our other awesome friends who were also in town and had their own Christmas! It was a really fun and o so yummy! 

Of course the only picture I got was of some of the kids playing after breakfast and not of the yummy food or the adults! Dang it.

So Christmas was a lot of fun and I am glad that we decided to stay home, even though we really missed our families! But we sure have some precious memories from this Christmas and it was the BEST one yet! :)