Yule and Christmas

We had a truly lovely Yule and Christmas. For Yule we invited Jenn, Eric and the kids over for a nice dinner and a gift exchange for the kids. It was a fun evening as always. The adults enjoyed getting to sit and talk while the kids ran around and played. They of course were overjoyed after they got to open their presents. Than got two planes from them and was inseparable from the planes for days.

Ryan's parents arrived in the evening on Christmas day and as such told us to go ahead and open presents in the morning before they got here. The one major benefit of Than being 2 is that while he now understands the concept of presents he doesn't know which day is which and didn't know it was Christmas until we went in to open gifts. So while he got up early in the morning as usual, Ryan got to sleep in a bit while Than and I had a typical morning. After breakfast we went in to open gifts.

Not the best picture in the world, but all of the gifts in this photo were for Than. He was spoiled rotten. The joys of being the only grandchild I guess. Ryan and I combined had about 6 gifts and Than had quite the haul. He enjoyed ripping the packages open and even really enjoyed opening our presents for us. Very quickly however he made it clear that after he opened the gift it had to be removed from the box and assembled before he would move on to the next. This meant opening his gifts took a very long time but was thoroughly enjoyable.

One of the only gifts we personally got for him was a MP3 player boombox thing that was made for small children by Discover kids. You can change the songs on it as he gets bored or you start to go insane from hearing the same music over and over but the thing appears to be indestructible and has very simple buttons that Than can operate. As he is obsessed with music and loves to dance it was a great gift. It also meant that during the opening of presents after he had opened that one he would frequently stop for a dance break and demand that we dance too and "shake your booty".

Thomas the train stuff from Grandma and G-Pa, a very big hit.

The other huge hit was the insanely large tool set from my Aunt Faith and Uncle Bill. They are single handedly contributing to Ryan's nervous breakdown. He has spent several days twitching and mumbling about how we have too much stuff, we need to get rid of all this stuff...Than loved it though.

Just a fraction of his haul. Some of what he got; like the scooter, helmet and pads from my Dad went straight into the basement until spring when he can use it.

We have been thrilled to have Ryan's parents here with us. It has been a wonderful visit and Than adores his grandparents. He will not leave Grandpa alone for more than a minute before he is calling for him and demanding that he come there and play. But while exhausting, Rich and Pam seem to be reveling in the time with him. We just wish they could stay longer.