Tom had five days off this Christmas. The four days leading up to Christmas and Christmas day. Because we wanted to savor every minute of that time, we decide against traveling anywhere. Instead we enjoyed a cozy quiet Christmas at home. Because Scotter’s too young to know otherwise, and because we thought it would be fun to have a day after Christmas to play with new toys, etc. We celebrated on the 24th. Leading up to it we enjoyed dancing to and singing Christmas carols, blasting “The Messiah” at home, acting out the Nativity- where Scotland got to play about every part, working on a few projects around the house (Tom’s gifts to me), and watching shows.
I think Tom was more excited for Christmas morning than anyone else. He waited anxiously for Scotland to wake up. Scotland, true to, form slept in- he only does so when we wish he wouldn’t!

Scotland got a new train set from Santa, that was all set up under the tree. To our disappointment it didn’t work super well with our existing train set, so it didn’t result in a super long track, but it does work much better than our last. And Scotland LOVES all the new trains. (He would have happily played with his new train all day, and passed on any other presents if we’d let him. Hmmmm. Always makes me wonder if we should have.) That being said the gift of the year was probably this $1.00 garage sale find- a marble track. We all had a blast loading it up with marbles and hearing and seeing them crash their way down our various tracks. It was one of the only truly novel toys we gave Scotland (as his other large gift, from Grandma and Grandpa Foutz, was two new sets of Magni-tiles- which he loves. But they weren’t new per say. And his train set wasn’t novel either.) Another favorite was the silly puddy in his stocking, and of course the salted caramel macadamia nut clusters were a hit.
 

I was excited to give Scotland his first legitimate drum. He’s been using his tambourine as his main drum, in addition to pots, pans, and oatmeal containers. He was thrilled with it and has played it a ton since.

Another garage sale treasure was this remote control car Scotland gave Tom. He slipped the night before and after I told him “tomorrow you will get to give Daddy his gift!” he said, “It’s a car!. . . I mean, it’s a secret!” They had a blast racing it around the house, and later the playground.

(Here’s for baby number two- Here you are bud!)

 I made Scotter a photo book with all the pictures of him through the year. We had a lot of fun taking time looking through and reminiscing over our year together.

The weather was gorgeous, so we headed to the park that afternoon to shoot off Scotter’s stomp rocket, and drive Tom’s remote control car, and quadcopter. Gotta say, I didn’t miss the snow. (Though I appreciated the dusting we got a few days before that allowed us to make small snowman!)

Contrary to Christmases past we spent next to no time cooking. We ate leftovers, or simple meals. I did make cinnamon rolls for Christmas morning, so that was fancy, but other than that, we kept things super low key. It was nice to not spend so much time in prep and clean up, and to instead focus on playing and being together.

Overall, I felt like our Christmas gift giving was very successful. As I mentioned Scotland got a lot of add on gifts. More trains, more magnitiles, more musical instruments. All have allowed him to take his play to the next level as well as made it easier for us to play with him. His stomp rocket and swing have helped encourage us to get outside more.

And a few other shots from our Christmas photo shoot: