Christmas Day 2009

My cute brothers, Kyle, Jackson, and Tanner, up "early" on Christmas morning.

I'll start off by saying that this is probably going to be a pretty long post. But hey, Christmas only comes once a year, and my kids are only going to be little at Christmas for so long. So I'm making the most of this blog entry and including lots of pictures and lots of video.

Lincoln let us all sleep until a very reasonable hour this morning, 7:30am. By then Aaron was back from taking Kelly to the airport, and the rest of us felt like we'd gotten to sleep longer than we expected (well, I don't really know what Kyle, Juice, and Tanner expected, but they didn't complain about it so we were happy). Lincoln and I went into each of the uncles' rooms and Lincoln jumped on them to wake them up and then wished them a "Merwee Chwissmis". Then we went upstairs and waited for everyone to gather. Ivan was still sleeping and so we decided that he would be better left alone. We did not wake him up. Once everyone was gathered, we went into the living room and did Christmas socks. Lincoln got to go first because he was the youngest. Here's Lincoln getting into his sock...

My favorite part is when he finds his Christmas tree DoodlePro. He pulls it out and says, "A triangle!" And I say, "That's a Christmas tree." And Linc says, with the exact same excitement, "A Chwissmis Twee!" And I (realizing that it was good that he noticed it was a triangle) say, "which is in the shape of a triangle, you're right." And then Linc says, "Anna dwaw. (I want to draw)"

Lincoln and his "he-tah-ter (helicopter)" that he found in his stocking

Lincoln's very favorite stocking stuffer, and probably his very favorite thing overall really, was this helicopter sucker. It's a sucker on the bottom when you twist the cap off, and then on top is a helicopter, and if you push a button the blades spin around and light up. He actually cried when we took it away from him so that he could focus to open up some of his other presents. He even took it with him to nap.



I thought the video of Aaron getting into his sock was funny. At the end when I talk about being able to pull toy cars from under the washing machine, my mom says something in the background that you can't really hear. She says, "Or a notebook that someone drops down the lint tray." That was a joke because right after Ivan was born and she was staying with us, she was doing some laundry, and took out the lint screen to clean it. We had a small spiral notebook sitting on the dryer for some reason, and she bumped it and it fell in the lint tray and all the way down into the back of the dryer. Aaron had to pull the dryer out and take the back off to get it out. It was pretty funny. So we were joking that the magnetic stick would have come in handy then.

Aaron getting into his stocking

Here I am getting into my sock. This is about all the decent footage/photos of me. I looked like a scary beast on Christmas morning, and even though I did find some time in the afternoon to shower and do my hair, I stayed in my jammies all day long. :)


After everyone got a peek at their stocking stuffers, it was time for presents! The pic on the left is Ivan's stack, and the pick on the right is Lincoln's. I'd say they made out like little bandits. It was actually kind of nice that Ivan decided to sleep late, because we got to focus our attention all on Lincoln, and then he was content to play with his stuff when Ivan woke up and then we could focus all our attention on Ivan. I think my very favorite part of Christmas is watching everyone unwrap their gifts. Especially gifts that you put a lot of time, or thought into. I really wish we could have been in two places at once this year. We made almost all of the gifts we sent to Aaron's family, and it would have been so fun to watch them open them.

Lincoln opening his and Ivan's box full of hand puppets

Ok, Aaron, I'll admit I went a little overboard with the puppets. But really, I couldn't help it. I just think that the kids will get hours and hours of fun out of making up puppet shows. It's something I would have LOVED as a kid. So ya. Costco since about Sept. has had the cutest little hand puppets, they come four in a box, and they are well made out of nice fabric and they just looked like so much fun. So, I (at different times between Sept and Christmas) ended up with four boxes of puppets for the kids. But I think they'll get good use out of them, Lincoln already asks to play "puppet show", so I'm not worried.

Lincoln opening his Little People firestation from G&G Swan

Lincoln opening his basketball hoop

Aaron opening his router bit set from Mom and Kerry, and sporting some lovely tinsel

Lincoln playing with his Mag Neatos, which are magnetic blocks

Ivan finally woke up to celebrate his first Christmas around 9:00am and joined us to "open" his presents. He got a lot of help from Lincoln. In this video he's opening his little cars from Grandma and Grandpa Swan. They were a huge hit with both boys.

Ivan in his new BYU hat

My mom made these cute litte fleece snow hats for all the grandkids. I definitely have to learn how to make them for next year. Ivan looks so cute in his. So does Lincoln, but he wouldn't hold still and leave it on long enough for me to take his picture.

Mom and Kerry went in with us to get Ivan this cool bead maze box. I was a little worried that he wouldn't like it right away, that it would be one of those presents that he'd have to grow into, but he loved it. He pulled himself right up to it and started pushing the beads along the wires. I'm glad.


I don't know what it was, but Ivan was being really photogenic this morning. It seems like every picture we took of him was too cute not to post on here. :) Here he is after opening his nesting and stacking balls.

This present is kind of silly, but it's one of my favorites that Ivan got, probably because he likes it so much. It's a stuffed lion that's the exct same size as Ivan. He loves it and laughs his head off whenever you hold it in front of him. It was actually supposed to be a stocking stuffer, but it didn't fit in his sock.

Aaron sacked out on the couch shortly after breakfast. Guess it was a lot for him getting up so early to go to the airport and then all the Christmas excitement. He got a three hour nap, which was probably his best Christmas present. :)