Christmas in Pictures

I'm a little late in getting the Christmas post up.  Doesn't Christmas already seem like it was weeks ago?

I had to beg ,  try really hard not to get in a fight, ok, maybe we did get in a little heated discussion

for Andy to finally take down the Christmas tree today.

We decorate so early because I'm so anxious for the holiday (November 20 this year), that by the time Christmas comes and goes, I'm ready to get everything down on December 26 at 8am.

Not everyone in this family shares my urgency.

Here are Addison & Graham when we got home from church on Christmas Eve.

 The elves had come and stuffed their stockings while we were gone, but it took the kids almost an hour and a half to even realize it. 

 Then she got a little excited when she found the note our Elf, Nio, had left.

While I'm on the subject of Nio, it's taken Addison a while to get used to the fact that Nio no longer lives at our house.

At least not until next December.

She just stopped asking to go look for him every morning.

I don't think Nio understood the term, "stuffers".

 I don't have many pics from Christmas morning this year, but I do have a few to document one of Addison's gifts from Santa.

She has been asking for purple Tinkerbell skates since September when she saw them at Target.

 Ever since her first ride Christmas morning, she doesn't ask for them anymore.

I think we need more practice.

And I don't have the pictures to document, but Graham clearly understands how presents work now.

I think he got a crash course between his birthday and Christmas.

If we weren't watching he would have opened everyone's gifts under the tree.

His vocabulary has sky rocketed in the last month.

Some new words he learned last week were:

"open this please"

"Daddy, open present"

"more"

"mine"

and finally, we did teach him "Baby Jesus".

I think he will be participating in advent next year to learn what this holiday is truly about a little more.