The Carstens: The First Christmas in Our House!

This Christmas was super, super exciting to me as it was the very first Christmas that was celebrated in our actual home! Normally, we either head down to Portland, OR and celebrate Christmas with Nate's family or we celebrate Christmas with the Akers family on Christmas day. This year I really pushed to have our own little family's Christmas celebration in our own house. It took a bit of finagling (and then even more so on the days leading up to Christmas) but we did it! Dave and Linda came up from Portland with Nate's Grandpa (Chuck). Chuck then went to Nate's Aunt and Uncle's house to spend some time catching up with that part of the family (since we travel down to Portland frequently we tend to see a lot more of Grandpa than the others so we were okay with him "disappearing"for a bit). Christmas Eve we went to my parent's house to celebrate with my family which meant that Christmas morning was free to do our celebrating.

We started off our Christmas celebration the night before with Nate reading Abby "Twas the Night Before Christmas". This Advent season I made the HUGE mistake of deciding to give a wrapped book to her every night for her to open and read. We had almost enough Christmas/Winter themed books to do this from Nov 30th - Dec 24th so I thought it'd be a fun Advent activity for her to look forward to. Never again. Inevitably, I never did get around to wrapping up all the books so pretty much every night while she was taking a bath I was scrambling at the last minute to wrap up a book. Plus, I hadn't really hidden the books too well so she found the stash and then was sad when she opened up a book that night and found that it was one she'd seen earlier and therefore it wasn't a new to her book. Last reason why I won't be doing this again is that she's one to read a book over and over and over again and with only opening up one book a night instead of having all the books all at once she'd glom on to her favorite few and not want me to read the "new tonight" book. When I'd previously presented all the books we averaged out what we read much better. So that idea was our "Pinterest fail" for the season.

Once I was sure she was asleep I brought the many Christmas presents out of hiding (can you tell she's the only Grandchild on Nate's side of the family?) and hung up the stockings (Nate's parents are up with Abby's on the fireplace, Nate's and mine are chilling on the floor next to the dollhouse).

The next morning was exactly as I envisioned. Nate and I both got to sleep in a little bit, but still woke up long before Abby did. All four adults got up and dressed and had time for a cup of coffee before the little one's door creaked open. Her face upon seeing all the Christmas joy we'd put up in the house the night before was just wonderful to see. Then, with no rushing or cramming in of activities...with no clock to be watching....and with no plans of any type for the morning we began to celebrate togetherness, family, Christ's birth, and lots and lots of presents.

Abby started with her stocking and I learned that wrapping almost every item in her stocking is unnecessary. She enjoyed opening up the gifts, but by the end she needed an unwrapping presents break. :-) Here she expresses her utter delight in the Santa Claus skittles she was given.

After a short pause where she wanted to open all the candy she was given, as well as make sure everyone else knew they had candy in their stockings, we began opening 'under the Christmas tree' presents.

Abby did a great job handing out gifts to everyone.

Starting to get excited with opening a few presents. She now has dolls to play with in her dollhouse. We were gifted the house and two dolls (Dad and Sister) and I bought Baby as an I Love You gift, but we made the mistake of allowing her to take the dolls with her when we went places and we soon lost Dad and Baby. So she had Sister and McDonald's barbies as her only dollhouse dolls. Not anymore! She got a New Dad, Mom, and Little Sister. Yay for imagination!

As my child tends to fall on the higher range on the growth charts she'd outgrown all of her play clothes. Finding play dresses in a size larger than 3T (she's currently in 5T) proved to be more difficult than I imagined. Thankfully I found two that were of the right size (and price! - as I was unwilling to spend $30+ for a play outfit) and "princessy" enough to be considered a princess dress even though they weren't.

Then she opened up a present from Grandma and Grandpa and present opening took a pause. She was gifted a jewelry box with a dancing ballerina that played music. Oh my stars did she love, love, love it. So, while she sat and played with her jewelry box for an extended period of time...

we adults opened our presents (Dave enjoying the calendar we created for him for work)...

and ate breakfast. I made Holiday Hashbrown Casserole and French Toast Casserole and we were gifted the cinnamon rolls. Mmm mmm mmm. It was a yummy feast! Abby would come by every few minutes and snag a bite but mostly she was enjoying herself and her new toys in the living room.

After breakfast Abby went back to opening up her presents and pausing in her opening as she saw fit.

I honestly think the best part of having Christmas be at our house for Christmas Day this year was how relaxing everything was. There was no rush to open presents as we had no need to get Abby home in time for a somewhat decent bedtime. There was no hurry to be done with celebrating as we had no place else to be anytime soon. There was no formality of any type as it was just close family. It was just comfort, laughing, eating, playing, and enjoying the day as it came.

Abby still working on opening gifts as she tended to play with each one for a significant amount of time before wanting to see what else was available.

During one of her present pauses she used her new makeup to do up my face. She was VERY specific on where the colors should go. When I suggested pink go on my cheeks she gave me a look that clearly displayed I was crazy and proceeded to color my nose instead.

Having fun trying to pick out a booger. Yes, I'm that kind of Mom. :-)

Showing Dad how her new Duplo legos work.

Much later in the afternoon, after we'd cleaned up the house, put our new gifts away, and were just thinking a new face would be nice to see, it was time to head to the Eslinger's house for a Christmas Day early dinner feast of prime rib. There we got to visit with Nate's Grandpa, Aunt and Uncle, cousins, their husbands and children. It definitely felt like a bit of a crazy zoo after the calmness of our morning, but we still had a lot of fun catching up with people and eating yummy food.

Grandpa reading Abby her new book...The Little Girl Who Lost Her Name. It's a book where a little girl wakes up to find out she can't remember her name, goes on an adventure collecting letters from the various beings she meets, and then realizes that all the letters she's collected spell out Abigail - it's her name! :-)

The day after Christmas was originally intended as another calm and slow day to follow Christmas, but with my family involved some adjustments were to be made. :-) My family is notorious for last minute get-togethers and this was no different. What started out as a prime rib dinner (number three in three days, if you can believe it) for five ended up as dinner for twelve. Luckily we had extra prime rib and a few side dishes left over from a previous meal so with new prime rib and side dishes we had a feast fit for a lot of kings! I must say I did really well for having a "not gonna stress - everyone will get some sort of food to eat" type of attitude about the whole dinner and the evening was a fun one.

Since there were no presents to open we adults got to linger over dinner and dessert as long as we wished and the kids got to play with all sorts of new toys so they kept themselves entertained. It was a lovely way to end the day.

Our after Christmas Day feast with Mom's china! She gifted her china set to me when Nate and I got married and I'll admit that, other than wine glasses, I hadn't used it until now. Very happy we dusted the set off. Still not sure there will be a lot of use until Abby is older, though. :-)

I'll end this Christmas post with the pictures I took of Abby in her Christmas dress (she picked it out all by herself!) at church.