Christmas 2008

Happy New Year!

We had a fun Christmas this year. It started with an early celebration with Matt's parents the Saturday before Christmas, since they flew on Christmas Day to California to work on floats for the Rose Parade. Matt's brother Jon and his girlfriend Kristen then joined us at our house on the 23rd and stayed through Christmas morning, which was very nice. It was great watching Will and Ryan enjoy Christmas morning. To be honest, Santa didn't bring Ryan all that much stuff since he is not yet seven months old and really doesn't care. But he loved his new toys and played happily all morning. Will got more presents, but it was refreshing how not greedy and appreciative he was of each one. He wanted to play with each present for quite a while before he moved on to the next one. In fact, we ended up taking a considerable break for breakfast and then rushed him through the second half of the presents in order to get on the road to get to my parents' house in upstate NY. I felt bad, but knew that he'd have plenty of time to savor everything all over again when we got back home.

We were then off to my parents', which was a strange drive (for example, Matt, Will, and I ate leftover pumpkin pie in the car for lunch because we didn't want to stop so early into the trip and I didn't have time to make sandwiches before we left). I was convinced that the traffic would be very light on Christmas Day, but it was still bad in New Jersey so it took longer than we expected. Still, it was all right and a delicious dinner was waiting for us when we finally arrived. Kate and Carlos were there already, along with Auntie Em and Joe, so it was a pretty festive night even though Meagan and Chris didn't join us until the next day. The 26th was our official family Christmas since the whole family was there together. This was as merry an event as always, and the boys got lots of very cool new toys.




And we basically just hung out for the next several days. One day Will went sledding down the hill in my parents' side yard and built a huge snowman. He had a fabulous time and recouped his strength once inside with a cup of hot chocolate.




Now we are back home and enjoying a leisurely few days before Matt goes back to work.