Once again, Christmas has come and gone and left behind in it's tracks millions of messy living rooms! Ours was no exception! With three kids in the house ages 1, 3, and 14, there was plenty of excitement over the course of many hours.
The festivities kicked off on Christmas Eve. Usually we go to Jen's dad's house on the 24th, but this year we decided to host the affair at our pad. So we had Jen's dad and his wife Marie, plus Jen's brother Mike and his girlfriend, Jen's sister Karen and her husband and three kids, plus Marie's daughter and her husband and two kids. That's 18 people in our house along with enough food for 37 people!
Now all season long, Elias has been talking about Doggie Doctor. All he wanted from Santa was Doggie Doctor. It's a Play-Doh set with a plastic dog and you can make band-aids for him, or make fleas and like a half-dozen other stuff. He started talking about it in September and we told him that it would be a good thing to ask Santa for...figuring he would forget about it by Christmas and we wouldn't have to have the messy Play-Doh in our house. Well, he didn't forget and he didn't let Santa forget in his numerous visits to St. Nick between mid-November and Christmas Eve.
So, we cut to Christmas Eve night and the first round of gift giving. Pop Pop and Marie hand Elias a gift. Apparently in Elias' head he thought this was it...this was the moment of truth...this was the ONE Christmas gift he was getting. He starts to unwrap the present. Suddenly he stops. "No, No, No," he shouts. "This is not my Christmas present! I asked for Doggie Doctor! Not a Cars toy! This is not right at all! This is not the present I wanted." Now I guess this sounds a bit rude, but he wasn't rude/upset as much as he was sad...and he's only three years old - He just didn't understand! So we explained to him that this was the first in a long string of gifts he would be getting and that Santa hadn't come yet and that's who he asked to bring him Doggie Doctor. Elias tried to fight back the tears but after a couple of go-arounds explaining the process to him, he finally understood. He apologized to Pop Pop and Marie and then went about happily playing with his Lighting Strike McQueen toy! The whole senerio was very cute!
When your a little kid, you come down the stairs Christmas morning and all the presents are under the tree and it's all just picture perfect. What kids (and adults without kids) don't realize is that Santa just drops the stuff off at the house. It's up to mom and dad to put it all together and set it all up nice. (And when I say "mom and dad" I mean "DAD!") After our guests left on Christmas eve, and I got Elias to bed (Tanner was already out for the evening) I got started on the "living room transformation" at around 11:00pm.
How long to you think it takes to put together a Little Tykes Work Bench for a one year old? The answer: the better part of an hour! Not only did I have to dig out my tool box, I ended up having to take the whole project down to the basement so I could hammer the pieces together and not wake up the kids! Elias got a work bench too! His is a My First Craftsman comprised of 66 parts...there was another hour! Remember all those Sit n' Spins everyone had when we were kids? Apparently someone had to put all those together! Another 20 minutes down the tube.
The Fisher Price Little People Castle: removing it from the box and the 900 wires holding it to the box and then putting it together - half hour! T. J. Bearytales box and 500 wires removal plus dead battery/malfunction scare - 45 minutes. After all was said and done, I hit the sack at 3:30am! (I let Jen off the hook around 2:30)
Of course it was all worth it Christmas morning! Elias was delighted that Santa ate his cookies and Rudolph enjoyed the carrots we left out for him! Elias and Tanner both made a b-line for some of the toys that were unwrapped and set up while Joey eyed up his pile and did some last minute praying for his Nintendo Wii.
Elias, of course, got his Doggie Doctor! He rejoiced when he opened it and wanted to play with it immediately. However it was easy to sidetrack him with all the presents under the tree. Elias was also most pleased when he opened a box that was full of Cars (from the Disney movie CARS). We finally completed the set! We had been picking up a car here and there as we saw them while shopping, but we still didn't have Lizzie. We finally found a Lizzie the Friday before Christmas at an Antique Mall. We also got Elias the Fisher Price FP3 player, which is a kiddie version of an iPod. It's pretty cool. I loaded up with songs from his CD's plus some Disney music from my CD's. He can listen to it with headphones or a little set of speakers. He's spent the last two days listening to Beethoven's 5th (from FANTASIA 2000) over and over again! Oh, and the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse Playset that I bought back in September (and was really excited about) is perhaps the biggest piece of crap I've ever encountered bearing the likeness of the good mouse!
Joey unwrapped his usual collection of CD's and DVD's along with a couple of other items. He was most excited about getting a digital camera and a Nintnedo Wii. Jennifer and I were excited about getting the Wii as well. We had checked many stores many times over the holiday season and to no luck. Last Wednesday, Jen's stepdad (who owns a computer shop) came through for us by snatching one of two up from his distributor! And by the way...that thing is cool too! The controller that you just point at the TV and move around is super cool. And you can get online with it...and you can watch You Tube...on your TV, laying on your sofa. That's the greatest...I gotta get one!
Tanner didn't really know what the heck was going on all day! He liked opening presents but he seemed to be more interested in what everybody else had got. His favorite present turned out to be a set of board books featuring the characters from the CARS movie. His two favorite words to say are "car" and "book" so I guess that was the prefect marriage of the two for him. Tanner also got a T. J. Bearytales, which is an audio-animatronic teddy bear that tells stories and sings songs. A Mickey Mouse toy cell phone and some Little People were also among the presents Tanner had waiting for him from Santa.
My wife got her favorite thing - diamonds, in the form of some ear rings that supposedly match a bracelet I gave her at some point. (I should pay better attention to all that stuff.) I think Jen also really like her Dance Dance Revolution Disney Mix Plug n Play that I got her! Oh, and don't forget the Can Opener!
Myself, I'm currently listening to my 6 CD set "A Musical History of Disneyland" which as you can imagine is sweet! I also got some DVD's like ALF Season Four, and SOAP Season Two. And I got a life size replica of Kermit the Frog! It's freakin' huge. I have no idea where I'm going to put it!
Christmas night we went over to Jen's mom's house for diner and more gifts! You can't go wrong with too many gifts!?
Well...that's enough of this! You can check out the pictures at our new picture site on Flickr. Hope you had a Merry Christmas and all that good stuff too!
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