Merry Christmas Eve

(I know it's not the clearest picture, but here is our Christmas tree all decorated and presents all wrapped up!)

Well, it's finally here! It's Christmas Eve and I'm so excited! I can't wait until tomorrow morning when we go downstairs and see Hayden open all her presents. I'm not really doing any presents from Santa this year since she doesn't really understand it yet, but maybe next year. We also only got her 2 toys and some clothes. I know my parent's and in-laws will have plenty of toys and goodies for her, so I didn't want to over do it. Plus, her birthday is next week too, so I'm sure she'll get more than enough toys from both events!


We did take Hayden to see Santa on Tuesday night at the mall (finally!). Unfortunately Dan couldn't come with us, but Hayden did pretty well considering... She was so excited when we first got to the Christmas village at the mall. She saw Santa and was trying every way possible to get through the fencing and rope to get to Santa. There was a decent size line to wait, so Bianca and Jeremy went and got their last minute shopping done while I waited in line with Hayden. She was pretty well entertained by the other kids running around and she tried to join in the fun as best she could. It was more like she walked around and around the stroller and made faces at the other kids. Very cute!

Finally it was getting close to our turn and we could just barely see where Santa was sitting from where we were. Hayden tried desperately to lean forward to see Santa. Then it was our turn to go up. I put Hayden down to see what her reaction would be. I didn't want to force her to sit with Santa! She shocked me! She walked all the way from the entrance to the Christmas village all the way up to Santa with the biggest grin on her face! I wish I could have captured it on film, but they don't allow cameras in that area! Once she got to Santa, she just looked up at him in absolute amazement. Then it happened, Santa reached down to pick her up and she lost it! She started crying and screaming bloody murder! She was doing so well, I guess she just wanted to see Santa! So I sat on a stool and put her on my knee while Santa sat behind us. He would leave forward just in time to take the picture and sit back before Hayden turned around to look at him. It worked out pretty well, but I have to say, her picture came out pretty funny! She's not exactly smiling, nor is she crying. She's just trying to figure out what the heck is going on! I need to scan the photo on the computer, and as soon as I do I'll post it here!

Decorating the Tree

Our tree is finally decorate! Yay! I was so hoping to be more on top of things this year, but yet again we didn't get our tree up and decorated until the week before Christmas. Well, at least it's up, right?!

We did most of the decorating while Hayden was sleeping. Dan and I like to decorate together, it's something we've done since we moved into our first place. So most nights he gets home too late for me to stay up and wait, but Tuesday night he got home early enough that I was able to stay up and wait for him to decorate our tree! Hayden woke up in the middle of us decorating, so I brought her down to see what the tree looked like. She was in aww! It was so great seeing her eyes light up at the sight of the tree!

Last week she got the opportunity to help my parents decorate their tree. She was privilaged enough to get to put the star on the top too! Here she is with my dad putting the star on the tree...

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

We got the first snowfall of the season last Saturday. Wasn't really much, but enough to cover the ground and turn everything white! I simply love this time of year!

Christmas is just 2 weeks away and I'm just starting to get the decorations up. I promised myself that I would get everything done early this year, but so far I have failed myself! We got our Christmas tree and right now it's just sitting there, naked, in the living room. One of these days we'll get the lights and decoration on it, I promise! I did manage to decorate the rest of the house which is starting to really come together.

The Christmas shopping is another story. I'm about 10% done! I know, I really need to get my butt in motion! Guess I'll just have to go shopping the weekend! ;)