Christmas, a play in 3 acts: Act I

Scene: Home; Santa came to our house last night for an early Christmas since we will be traveling to Virginia for the real Christmas holiday. The Santa gifts weren't exactly portable (drums and a play kitchen), so we had to do our Santa traditions at home. We also had to adjust the advent calendar (a really big hit this year) by quite a few days for "Christmas" to show up on time! Thankfully, Evan didn't notice that it went from December 17 to 23 overnight.

Evan looking for Santa's elves, who left our special Christmas Eve pjs.

New pjs, cheesy grin (I took 4 of the same shot and this crazy smile appears in all of them).

Reading The Night Before Christmas.

The Santa scene.

The gift of all gifts. For those of you who haven't heard (a million times) about Evan's love of percussion -- the obsession has been going on since he was 1. He was 100% positive that Santa was going to bring him a drum set. The drums spent a whole day in our living room before being relocated to a room far, far away.

Grant playing with Evan's new truck (hurry quick, while Evan's not looking!).

The other gift of all gifts -- a homemade play kitchen. Santa's elves poured their hearts out (along with a little blood, sweat and tears) to put this together.

Evan calling Santa on his vintage retro rotary phone.

Opening gifts. Once again this year, we had to convince the boys to open the rest of their gifts. They were happy with just the unwrapped Santa gifts! Let's see how long we can keep that up.

The post-Christmas scene.

Stay tuned for Acts II and III.

Feliz Navidad like you've never heard it before

Sorry for the raw filming quality (we forgot our regular video camera), but this will give you a taste of the production we were treated to earlier this week at Evan's Christmas program. He's been singing this song around the house now for weeks.

Sorta fun Santa

Well, at least one child had fun. Although, Evan too was very distraught when we left Santa without receiving any drums. If you think about it, we had been telling Evan all day that he was going to see Santa to tell him what he wanted, so it would only seem natural in a child's mind that Santa was going to give it to him right then and there. "But I wanted my drums!" Further explanation was needed to explain that you don't get gifts from Santa until Christmas.

Cold day, wet yard = fun in driveway

Pop go the weasels

Some pictures deserve special attention

A visit and a trip

Last weekend, Grandma Soon & Papa visited and while here, we took a trip to the Georgia Aquarium, something we had been trying to plan for a whole year! The boys also enjoyed some early Christmas gifts involving cars, trucks and airplanes--a few of their "favorite things."

"Iyeh"

Grant's word for Evan sounds like "I-yeh." Iyeh is the first thing that Grant asks for every time he wakes up from a nap or in the morning and Iyeh is the first thing Grant says when I pick him up from school. And surprisingly, I've been hearing a lot more of "Gra-ant" from Evan these days too. But instead of yelling at Grant because he's touching Evan's toys, he's calling for Grant to come and play. Over and over, the boys play a game of chase/race around the house: Evan pushes a dump truck and is the "tractor driver" and Grant pushes a train and is the "train driver," so says Evan. Although it can get loud and crazy at times, this is a lot more of what I had hoped for with two little kids close in age. It's very sweet.

Sorry, no pictures to share of Evan this time around... he doesn't slow down much for the camera.