I'm sure I will say this every year...but...we had the best Christmas this year! It was so fun to see the kids get excited by the decorations and participate in fun family activities.
Samantha was very curious about Santa Claus and we read The Night Before Christmas three times a day for about 4 weeks and watched the last 30 minutes of The Polar Express almost daily (Santa watch? Santa watch?). It was so sweet to see the wheels turning in her head about Santa's magic sleigh and the reindeer. Pays has been given a silver Christmas bell every year since before he was born by his godmother and she loved to ring a bell as the boy in the movie was discovering that he could hear the bell.
The kids loved opening their Advent calendars everyday and it was a great tool to work on sharing. Samantha's chocolate was delicious and we took turns taking a nibble from it.
We also started a tradition of hiding an Elf for each kid every night for them to find in the morning. It started off pretty easy and then increased in difficulty as we ran out of places to hide them. Check out the sprinkler picture below...
We had a great time baking and decorating a gingerbread house which has been a fun Thompson tradition for many years. We also baked and decorated LOTS of cookies at my mom's house.
We spent the day with my parents on the 23rd and opened gifts and had two delicious meals. In the evening we celebrated the Polish tradition of Vigilia and had a meatless dinner. We enjoyed yummy pierogis, baked fish and polish sausage from a local Polish deli. Nonni and Grandpa Mikey gave Samantha a baby doll crib that had been mine when I was young. It was a very special gift that we will treasure for years to come.
In the am on the 24th we opened presents at our apartment and had a yummy breakfast of leftovers from my parents'. After the kids napped we headed to High Point to celebrate Christmas Eve with the Moore family, Gammy & Popsy and the Herrmanns. It was a wonderful evening and we devoured Gammy's yummy lamb and Marty's phyllo wrapped chicken and played Dirty Santa. On Christmas Day we opened stockings and presents together before the 'young' Moores headed to the 'old' Moores and had a quiet dinner with a family friend and Gammy made duck. Yum! We apparently hadn't eaten enough and shared an incredible prime rib roast and a Buche de Noel dessert on the 26th. It was amazing! The weather was beautiful the whole time and the kids had some great outdoor time taking walks, jumping on the trampoline and visting the horses and chickens.
The best gift for us this year was having family close by to share in the magic of the holiday with our kids. It is so great to see how excited they get when we tell them we are going to see their grandparents, cousins and aunts and uncles. We look forward to many more holidays together in the years to come.
Such a fun time!
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