"Christmas Morning"

We celebrated Christmas morning a couple day's early at our house. Ellie is young enough she doesn't know the difference. And Mommy isn't very good at waiting, so for her opening gifts a couple days early is a good thing for her.

We gave Santa the heads up, and he dropped off his presents ahead of time. As you can see, Ellie was really excited about the gifts Santa left her. Or she was really excited about sitting on the gifts Santa left her...

Santa even remembered that when Nick was younger he would leave him a piece of fruit in his stocking, and continued that tradition with Eleanor! Eleanor was a big fan of the orange and tried to eat it just like she does an apple. She promptly gave the peel she had bitten off to her Daddy- an orange is not like an apple (she then found the apple Santa left Mommy and took a bite out of that instead).

She loved the chair Santa left her.

But her favorite toy was the one that played music (which she is dancing to in the picture) and popped balls out of itself. She LOVED this toy and all other gift opening had to wait while she played with it.
We spent the day as a family, starting our new tradition of Christmas breakfast consisting of turnovers and cinnamon rolls (based on Nick's family tradition). Christmas dinner was based off of Kara's family tradition with meat, cheese and cracker (and wine for Mommy & Daddy, but minus the shrimp). We spent all day in the PJ's Santa had left for us the night before- Santa is so smart! We had a wonderful, relaxing day!