At any rate, we had a really nice Christmas this year. Mike had the 23rd off, which was great cause we got to spend the day as a family (complete with a trip to Trader Joe's...mmmm...love that place!) and get all of our Christmas wrapping, etc, finished. We treated Christmas Eve as our family Christmas, so we woke up as if it were Christmas morning. We had all of Eli's presents out and his stocking ready, but all my child wanted to do was brush his teeth. Haha. "Look, Eli! Presents!!!" "Teeth? teeth?" lol. So after that, I gave Eli his stocking. He took GREAT delight reaching in and discovering his new cars, trucks, planes, etc, from target. He ran off to play with them and that seriously could have ended his morning. He was totally content to just play with those 5 $1 toys I got him. Lesson learned for next year. I had to keep dragging him back to his stocking. I had to hide the stickers from him or it would have taken us hours to get through everything. (He likes to take off each sticker and put them all on his hand). Then we took a break to read some stories and eat breakfast.... then went back to the presents.
I thought Eli was going to be allllll about tearing into his presents this year, but to be honest, he couldn't have cared less. He enjoyed the fact that they were stacked up and used them as a road/mountain for his new prized cars.... but we couldn't get him to understand that there were toys in there for him. He even accidentally knocked one of the boxes over and insisted on stacking it up right where it had been. Daddy had gotten him a little LeapFrog laptop that says the alphabet, and that was the one and only present eli opened on his own. He really surprised me by sitting really patiently while we un-twined and un-taped all of the toys he got (Do they really have to reinforce the little twisty things THAT much?). He loved his new garbage truck and delighted in pushing it around on the couch over and over again. Most of the other things we gave him were books, and he didn't even look at all of them cause of his excitement over his cars. He also got some new cars, trucks, etc, for the tub, which he is thrilled about.
We made it to Christmas Eve mass at our church (we decided to go there instead of going to midnight mass with mike's family since eli wouldn't be able to stay up that late) and Eli was fairly well behaved. :) We then headed over to Mike's family's house to celebrate with his parents, sister Carol, and cousin Bambi. We had a great time hanging out, going over the family tree, and skyping with relatives in the Philippines. They went to midnight mass and when they came home, we watched old videos of Mike and his sisters when they were little. I can't believe I was able to stay up til 3am! We woke up at almost 9am (I can't believe we were the last ones up! Thanks, Eli, for sleeping in!) and opened presents with the family. Mike and I gave Eli his ride-on motorcycle and realized we had committed a maaaajor parent error by not pre-assembling the "motee! motee!" He tried his hardest to be patient, but he couldn't contain himself and kept carrying the frame off (sans wheels) to sit on and "ride." Super cute. Mike's sister Ann and family came over and Eli had great fun playing with his cousin Jaymin. It was so fun to be with little Linamarie on her first Christmas! The Nieves family got Eli a train AND a dump truck, so he was in heaven. After watching some more family videos, we headed down to Maryland.
We made great time and got to Maryland around 5:30. My Mom and brother were there and we opened presents and hung out until dinner (turkey!! mmm!) was ready. Eli had GREAT fun driving his new little trucks (thanks, Grandma!) around. He only made it through about 1/4 of his presents before we put him to bed.
The next morning (Christmas part 3), we headed over to my Grandma's to see all of MY cousins... tons of people were there and we had a lot of fun! We came home and hung out with my uncle marty (who got Eli a thomas the train set!!! Biiiiig hit) before having Christmas dinner part 2!
Because of the big storm (the blizzard of 2010) up in NYC, we decided to head back on Tuesday instead of Monday.... that meant an extra day to hang out with the family. Eli loooooooved playing with his "mananeeeee!" (tito tommy) and nana. And I got to go out to a movie! woohoooo! And dinner! Woooohoooo!
Ok.... Eli just woke up from his nap. I left out a million things and wanted to say more, but that'll have to do for now. Happy New Year, everyone!
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