With the all of  the preparations and parties of the holiday season and my husband on vacation until the new year, my attention to my duties as blogger have been a bit slap-dash for the past several weeks. I’ve been missing a lot of my daily and meme posts… plus lacking horribly in sharing great deals. Other than an increase in the size of the toy piles littered about our house, I have done away with all signs of the holidays and life is returning to its usual hum-drum. I’m hoping to be back to properly in the swing of things tomorrow.

That being said, I thought I would share the memories made on our son’s second Christmas. We started out on Saturday with lunch at Norm and Theresa’s. Xander’s grandparents, aunts, and uncles started him off with a proper spoiling! He received a tricycle, pillow pet, trucks, cars, action figures, candy, a Santa hat, and a real live popcorn machine complete with fresh popcorn made from Grandpa Norm and Grandma Theresa’s garden.

He had so much fun playing with his little cousins. He especially took to Ian. They were chatting away with each other… when one wasn’t trying to sit on the other. I think we got a glimpse of a future of boys being boys when we get together in the years to come.

We left there and headed to Mom’s house to celebrate with Matthew and the girls. I was so happy that he was able to work out a way to allow us to see them this Christmas. With things being what they are with my sister, time with my nieces is even more precious. We had a lovely dinner and caught up on missed time. My grandma, Aunt Dawnie and cousin Kristi even stopped by for a bit.

Everyone had a lot of fun opening gifts. I was very happy with the reaction from both Mackenzie and Nevaeh when they saw the socks I had made them… they really seemed genuinely excited. Xander loved the recorded storybook from Nana, but it will take him some time to truly appreciate the stuffed monkey from Matt and the girls. (He has a strange fear of stuffed animals when he first meets them, but warms up to them quickly.) We spent a good deal of the rest of the evening playing with Mackenzie’s fashion design studio that Mom gave her.

Mom came over to our place on Christmas Eve for our usual traditions. We started off with the usual cinnamon roll and sausages dinner, which is always yummy! We lounged about watching Christmas movies, chatting, and playing with Xander until it was properly dark. Then it was time to head out and see the lights around town. Everyone does such a beautiful job making their houses merry this time of year! We wandered into a local subdivision and discovered the best lights… and houses to lust after. I had no idea there were such huge, beautiful homes so close to us.

When we arrived back home, Santa had already been by. The jolly old elf had a habit of doing that when I was a child, too. Xander took to unwrapping like a pro! He appropriately gasped with excitement when he would first see what was inside. His best reaction was with the LeapPad2, but it was the Radio Flyer tricycle, rocking horse (from Nana) and the drum set (from Grandma) that he kept gravitating to. He stayed up way past his bedtime, but you would have barely known he was there with how well-behaved he was being.

We finished off the evening with homemade hot cocoa. It tasted so yummy and was a perfect end to a great weekend.