Christmastime Is Here

I'm a little late in posting this but I'm still trying to get back into the swing of things. This year all my Christmas traditions did not go as they normally do, but it was still a great Christmas. My stepbrother came over to spend the night with us and my mom sent him and my stepdad to their bedrooms for the night while me and her got everything ready for Christmas day. My mom finished cleaning the house up as well as start cooking all the food. We stayed up until close to 3 a.m. and then my mom took a quick (i mean like maybe 10-15 min.) nap on the couch and then I laid down for a little bit too. Maddy was having some bad dreams or something because she kept waking up crying saying "Mama" which is highly unusual for her. I went in there and she was sitting up in her bed and she wanted me to pick her up. I was able to get her back down, but she cried again around 5:40 a.m. and I decided to go ahead and go to bed then and sleep in her bed. We woke up around 7:40 a.m. and she seemed pretty rested. When I came out to finish getting everything ready for her to come out, her dad was here. There was no carrying her to her Christmas this year...she went flying into the living room just as she does every other morning. 

 This is what Maddy woke up to :)

 Maddy was so cute when she decorated her cookies for santa. Instead of putting the decorations on the cookie, she wanted to sort them out on the plate. She enjoyed eating the decorations and thought santa would prefer to just eat them as well

This was the picture of her running into the living room. When I was changing her diaper I asked her if she wanted to go see if santa ate his cookies and milk and as you can see she went straight to the plate. We left santa several cookies and he only left one. We also noticed he must have dipped his cookie in the milk cause there were crumbs in the milk.

 Before diving into the presents she had to sit back and take it all in

 It didn't take long before she was up and playing. There was a big difference in this Christmas verses last Christmas. Last Christmas she was really shy and didn't want to get out of my lap. This Christmas she was not shy at all and started playing pretty much right away. Amazing what a year's difference can bring.

 At Maddy's school they wear smock's to keep clean when painting. Santa thought she would enjoy wearing a smock at home and brought these really neat paints that only show up on the special paper. She really enjoyed painting at home and would ask to wear her smock before she did so...she's so smart!

She also really enjoyed playing with her kitchen. I'm hoping she has fun with it for a while:)


After playing the toys santa brought it was time to start opening the other presents.

She opened roughly two presents before she started saying no to presents. Her exact words were, "Nooooo....no presents" 

 This purple house is really neat. It's "The Little People" and Maddy absolutely loves it! She will make them walk up the steps, tell me they have to go potty, and that they are night night. She is really starting to use her imagination and it is really neat seeing it come out

After I realized she was just done with presents I decided it was time to do stockings.

She discovered there was lots of chocolate in there, but santa also left her a note...here is what it said:

She cracked me up because she would just push the petal down without steering and it was like she expected it to just ride her around lol. I didn't expect her to have the concept of the car by any means...it just looked funny to watch. She also had to have her chocolate with her at all times. She would start and stop her car. She really enjoyed playing in her car and it is murder trying to get her out of it. 

After finally getting her inside we decided to try to open a few more presents...

After Maddy was done with her presents and stocking it was mommy's turn to open her present

When I first opened it I wasn't sure if it was a dvd player or blu-ray. I was quickly trying to skim through and ended up just asking lol. I was completely surprised! I had no idea these things could hook up through the internet and play pandora and netflix and blockbuster and even facebook onn your tv! I also got a scrapbook storage tote. I have been trying to get one for a while now but they are so expensive and I wouldn't pay full price for it. My mom got a really good deal on this one and I am so very thankful she did because I absolutely love it! My other gift is she preordered the movie Courageous for me and it was the blu-ray/dvd combo. I have been anxiously awaiting this movie to come out on dvd since I couldn't go see it in theater's. In case you want to know it comes out on January 17th. I have learned a lot through their movie Facing the Giants and Fireproof and I'm sure I will learn something new through Courageous. Last but not least my mom got me a bottle of my favorite scent of lotion from bath and body works...sweet pea. I'm not one to just put lotion on throughout the day but i have been doing so multiple times throughout the day with it. My family does a chinese Christmas. What that is is instead of buying gifts for people we each buy a $20 gift and wrap it up. We still buy gifts for children but anybody 18 and up either does the chinese Christmas or they get nothing lol. Once everybody gets wherever Christmas is being held..this year it was our house...we eat and then count how many people are participating and make sure we have enough gifts to play. We then draw numbers and that is the order we go. Number 1 has it kinda bad because they are the first to go and don't have the option of stealing anything. The rest of the numbers can either pick a new present or steal from someone who has already opened a gift. When an item has been stolen three times it can no longer be stolen again. The rest of the pictures are of my family eating and playing and possibly some video I took on my phone of Maddy opening presents:

We all had a really fun time but we were all very exhausted. I think I am still recovering from Christmas Eve and Christmas :) 

Sneak Peak of Christmas

This has been one more exhausting weekend. I am really sad that Christmas has come and gone once again and will really miss listening to 24/7 Christmas music and watching nonstop Christmas movies. I have lots to share regarding Christmas, but am much too tired to try to do that now so I thought I would just post some pics I had on my phone for now. I hope everybody had a merry Christmas!

Christmas Eve

So I skipped a couple of nights of posting, but I've been sick. Today has been a very busy day as Christmas eve usually is. We went shopping from 9 a.m. until close to 3 p.m. today. It is our year to host Christmas so me, my mom, and Maddy piled in the car to go grocery shopping for lunch. We also had to get a few last minute gifts as well. When we got home we played some and then it was time to start making cookies for santa. I really wanted to make the cookies from scratch this year, but my getting sick really put a damper on those plans. I got some dough that Maddy could still roll out and cut shapes out and after trying to make them tonight I realized that really is the only way to go with a two year old lol.

While the cookies were baking in the oven Maddy was a big helper and helped her Nana vacuum.

After the cookies were done we decorated, but Maddy didn't really want to put them ON the cookie. She wanted to eat the decorations herself. She put some decorations on santa's plate too. We then made some reindeer food and sat outside for the reindeer. She was too exhausted to really care about the reindeer food lol. One tradition I have kept going is on Christmas Eve. Every Christmas eve night we were allowed to open one present. Here is Maddy opening her present..

We normally go to a candle light service at church, but there was just no way to make that happen this year. Maddy left her plate of cookies and milk for santa on the table near the tree and is sound asleep in her bed. We did make sure to sing happy birthday to Jesus before bed because He is the reason for the season! Me and Maddy had a great day and I just can't believe it's already Christmas eve. I hope everybody has a wonderful Christmas with their family!

On the Fourth Day Till Christmas

I want to start off by saying that Maddy is not ALWAYS in just a shirt and diaper lol. I don't remember the exact scenario in this video, but on the weekends it is an act of congress to get her diaper changed and usually if I can just get her diaper on I don't worry too much about her pants until I have to. I think this was the case here because the painting that was fixing to take place occurred in the mid morning to afternoon. This is the beginning of our home renovations. I know this has nothing to do with Christmas, although it kinda does because my mom had goals to meet to be done by Christmas. Maddy loves to clean things and as you can see she was keeping her eye on Nana to see what she was doing. I didn't get to write this last night because I took a one stop train to bed after work. On the fourth day till Christmas not much happened. The most exciting thing was Maddy had PJ day at her school. Here are a few pics:

It's so hard to believe that her PJ's are a 3T and for the most part fit! Her waist is so tiny that the pants are a little big but after rolling the waistband over they fit just fine. This is really random but she is in a size 4 diaper and I think we will be in this size a while longer. I am so thankful that I only have one more full day at work before beginning the crunch phase of the countdown to Christmas. 

On the Fifth Day Till Christmas...

Today was a little harder than I anticipated it being emotionally. I was for sure my car would be able to be fixed this week and not cost the $2700 I was originally told. I've since learned that the lowest total is $2500, which really does me no good. I will have to have my car towed back to my house until I can come up with the money to fix it. I told myself I wasn't going to cry today, but that didn't work out too well. I do feel as if God has everything under control, I guess I'm just a little bummed not knowing when I'll have my car again. That's been my day in a nutshell. As I mentioned earlier, I realized I could post video from my phone via youtube so I'm gonna be doing that. This obviously was from Thanksgiving. Maddy is so cute! I am so thankful that tomorrow is my last long long work day of the week. If I can get my last 12 hour day done then the 8 hour day on Thursday will seem like nothing. Friday is going to be an exciting day. Apart from getting up at 4 a.m. to work, my niece's are going to be coming up and we will be baking our "santa" cookies. This will be the first year Maddy has gotten to bake and I can't be more excited that she gets to bake with her cousins. The fifth day till Christmas is kinda boring so I will stop here, but tomorrow will be a little more exciting :)

Creativity

Maddy showed her first real creativity side. Maddy has been exposed to people wearing glasses a bunch...her Nana wears glasses to read and see, her dad wears glasses to see, and then everybody wears sunglasses. On this particular day she found like a twist tie laying around on the ground and decided to turn them into her glasses. Every time she saw that tie she would point and say, "glasses." I think it's neat to see her imagination come to life. I remembered I could send the videos from my phone to youtube and then from youtube to my blog so that's what I will be doing...I hope you all have a wondeful day and remember...only 5 days till Christmas :)

On the Sixth Day till Christmas...

I was actually gonna post this before I found out about my car, but now I need to post this to keep from crying my eyes out lol. I cannot believe we are six days away from Christmas. My mom was able to pick Maddy up for me today from daycare and when Maddy got home she came running to me saying, "MAMA!!!" and it just made my day. I could so use that right about now lol. We got some mommy/Maddy time tonight, which consisted of eating bite bites and playing. My grandmother came over to deliver presents, which created even more excitement for me for Christmas to get here. Christmas is actually bittersweet because I'm so anxious to see Maddy have a good time but at the same time I am so sad to see the season leave. I truly enjoy everything that Christmas brings and really hate to see it leave. Maddy is at the stage that she can fill in words to songs and it makes my heart happy. Her favorite to sing right now is "Rock-a-bye baby" I let her say the last word to each sentence and she does such a good job. She has also really seemed to pick up on Santa, which surprises me in a way. She knows he says, "ho ho ho" and "merry christmas" and I think she is semi associating him with presents. I really don't know what she associates him to because when I gave her a kiss tonight she looked at me and very excitedly said, "Santa!" She has really enjoyed seeing the lights and decorations on the way home this year. She also was able to decorate the tree more this year than she did last year. She's done a very good job of leaving the tree alone...last year she pulled the ornaments off and would try to eat the tree and all that good stuff lol. It's just another reminder of how fast and how much she is growing. I'd like to edit some of the Christmas video from last year to reminisce and then compare to this year's...when that happens of coarse. I know this post is nothing real real exciting and probably is not worth reading, but it will be to me lol. I hope to be able to post something every night this week to lead up to Christmas.