Christmas Day!

After days and days of anticipation, Christmas Day had finally arrived!!

 

Abby, Landon and Nolan ran down (or in Nolan's case, slid down) the stairs to see what Santa had brought...

 

 

They each had one big present that was unwrapped so that they could play with it as soon as they came down. Abby got an "American Girl" doll (aka Target knockoff) complete with a armoire and a few outfits, Landon got a V-Tech transformer Car/Dinosaur and Nolan got a riding Zebra.

 

 

Every new toy was thoroughly examined and they all seemed to meet their expectations...

 

Abby and Landon were very excited about their new LEGO kits...

 

 

And the final haul...(Nolan was a very thorough toy examiner and made sure that not only his toys were acceptable but that everyone else's were too!)

 

 

 

 

After a lazy day of playing with our new toys and playing outside in the snow, we sat down to a yummy Christmas feast!

 

 

 

I enjoyed Christmas a lot this year and I think it was in part due to the fact that we really stuck to the "3 gift rule" for each child. We have always done the "3 big gifts from Santa" each year, but then we ended up getting a bunch of smaller things so the kids seemed to have a million toys to open up on Christmas Day, half of which they never really played with again. This year, we still did a few smaller gifts but used those for our "12 Days of Christmas" leading up to Christmas Day and it was fun for the kids to open up just one gift each day and really enjoy it. This also prevented the mounds of presents on Christmas day and I think helped them to enjoy the presents they did get a bit more. I think this will be the start of a new tradition for our family!!