Christmas at Our House

We celebrated Christmas morning at our house on Christmas Eve morning.  Luckily, once again Santa was very accommodating and agreed to deliver our gifts one morning early.  I don't actually think the kids knew what day it was - they were just excited to have presents to open in the morning.

Our tree on Christmas morning

The other side of the Christmas tree

Cam and Leah waiting on the steps for Daddy to go down and turn on the Christmas lights and get the camera ready.  They were so sweet and excited!

Pretty excited to see what Santa left them!

They started out by digging into their stockings

In their stockings, both kids got stickers, shovels, chocolates, KinderSurprise eggs,  tattoos and some other fun little things.  They both really liked everything that they got in there.

One of their favorite gifts - a balloon animal kit, complete with balloons, a pump and a book to tell you how to make the balloon animals.

The kids took turns wearing the Mickey santa hat

One of their favorite gifts from Mama and Daddy were Bruins jerseys.  Here is Leah modeling hers.

Opening a gift with Mama

Leah's gift from Cameron - a Disney fairy set.  She loved it!

The aftermath of Christmas on our family room.   It was quite a mess!

We did a really bad job taking pictures during our Christmas this year!  We normally take one with each of us and our gift pile, or at least a family picture.  We ended up taking a family picture a few days later - I'll post that another time.

Leah's big present was a bike (a Strider - no pedals).  She also got some princess stuff, DVDs, a Wii game, books, her own Tag reader, some Trios and other fun stuff.  Cameron's big gift was a huge Lego city set.  Leah got him a really neat remote control race car that drives on the wall. He also got some books, DVDs, HexBugs, other small lego sets, games, Transformers and other toys. 

My big gift from was a beautiful file cabinet that Tim built.  It looks like a nice piece of furniture but inside it has lots of file cabinet space.  It is really perfect, exactly what we needed.  And it makes it so much more special because Tim made it himself.  He was quite the craftsman this year, also making me a little pouch that holds crayons to put in my purse - before that I was always using a plastic bag that would rip!  Tim's gifts were a hand truck, tall step stool, some clothes, scotch, a game, some DVDs and other things.

We had a special breakfast of cinnamon buns, eggs and fruit - all some of the kids favorites.  We spent the morning playing with Christmas gifts and then drove up to Rochester for our next Christmas!

Christmas at the Kinsellas

On Saturday afternoon, we started the first of our many Christmas celebrations.  This one was with Nana and Poppa, Paul and Ang, and Matt and Gina.  We went over to Mom and Dad's house in mid afternoon and the eating began!  Usually we do an appetizer dinner but this year we decided to try the grazing concept.  We made and cooked food and just ate a bit here or there as the afternoon and evening went on.

The Christmas tree with lots of gifts underneath

One of our fancier apps, courtesy of Ang

Cameron playing on the treadmill

Leah's turn

One of Cameron's favorite things to do - wrestle with his uncles!

Making more appetizers

Eating more appetizers

 Time to start opening gifts.  Stockings are first (and only for the little kids).

Happy elf

Excited about his glowstick sword

Leah in a very cool chair from Uncle Matt and Aunt Gina

Cam tearing into one of his gifts

Leah was very excited about the book that Poppa got

Leah and Poppa reading all about Guadalcanal

Uncle Paul and Aunt Ang got Leah a princess bathing suit.  She wanted to put it on immediately and wore it the rest of the night.

Cam doing more wrestling with his uncles

A swimsuit-clad Leah opening up one of her gifts

And working out

One of Cam's gifts from Nana and Poppa was this really cool straw kit - it came in a bunch of pieces and you can build whatever kind of cool straw contraption you can think of.  Cam came up with this one and then tried to drink up the blue and yellow colored water.

It was pretty tricky but he did it. And turned the yellow water green!

Playing with Leah's princesses

Whoever threw this gift at Cam must have known what was in there!

Cameron was very happy and excited to get a Bruins pillow pet (to go with his Red Sox and Patriots pillow pets)

Poppa working hard on a puzzle

Leah with the finished product

 Leah eating for the fifth time that night

Leah was dancing in the family room with her princesses, so Uncle Paul decided to join her.

They are such pretty princess dancers!

Family picture!

A wonderful way to start our weeks of Christmases!

Decorating the Christmas Tree

We also decided to decorate our Christmas tree that weekend.  We thought through our plan on how to decorate the tree, after almost breaking some ornaments last year, and decided to start from the top of the tree and decorate downwards.

Cameron asked to put the star on the top of the tree.  We weren't sure if he would be able to reach, but figured he could try.  Daddy and Cameron climbed up the 12 foot step ladder towards the top of the tree.

Tall ladder, tall tree.

Excited to be putting up the star.  Unfortunately, his little arms were not quite long enough!  Daddy ended up having to put it on for Cameron, after trying to lean him far enough forward to reach the tree.

Cam loved decorating the tree, looking at each ornament and carefully choosing a place to put it.

Tim decorated the top of the tree using the 12 foot step ladder and putting up the heaviest ornament. Cam, Leah and I picked out the ornaments and gave them to Tim to put up top.  After that we brought in the 6 foot step ladder for decorating the middle level.  Cameron and Tim used that, while I helped Leah to decorate the lower half of the tree.

Leah wanted to get up on a ladder but couldn't really reach from the 6 foot step ladder, so we brought the little step stool for her to use.  She liked being able to climb up and hang the ornaments "up high."

Cameron liked being big enough to put ornaments up on the middle part of the tree.

Showing off one of his ornaments

Leah wanted to show an ornament too but got a little too close to the camera.  She is still cute though!

He just loved decorating the tree!

So did Leah, although she was very particular about the ornaments that she wanted to put on the tree (and we were very particular about the ornaments that we LET her put on the tree!!).

Big helper putting away the step stool

The final product - 14+ feet of beautifully decorated tree!  This year it was the first time we were able to fit all of our ornaments on the tree (and I think we definitely had room for more).