Christmas 2008

On Wednesday, Christmas Eve, my parents had already driven up, and Cara and my dad and I spent a fair portion of our morning walking through the snow to pick up the rest of our holiday meal from the store. When we got back and put everything away, my dad and I put chains on my parents' car, and then we all went to see Biglittlethings, which a coworker of mine is performing in this year. It's an annual thing, but none of us had ever seen it before, and I think we all thought i was quite excellent. Elias was delighted with it - I kept alternating between watching the show and watching Elias watch the show. One of his classmates was also there, which was a nice surprise. Afterwards, we met Patrick for dinner, and then my parents picked up Joanna from the airport, and we were finally all assembled. Things were still pretty snowy that night, so everyone stayed at our place instead of going back and forth from houses or hotels. Before Elias went to bed that night, he left some cookies and soymilk out for St. Nicholas, along with a note.

Elias woke up at about 6:30 on Christmas morning. We weren't sure if everyone was awake yet, so he looked through his stocking in our bed. He was pretty excited about the little, plush Kung Fu Panda toys. After we went downstairs and had breakfast, it was time for the main event. Elias wanted to pass out the presents to everyone and he had a lot of fun doing that. He also had more presents than anyone else, too, so he was kept pretty busy opening his own stuff. He got a couple Wizard of Oz books (we've been reading him Wizard of Oz at bedtime -- he loves Jack Pumpkinhead) a talking globe, a couple games, some superhero and knight figures, a Spider-man puzzle, a TAG reading system that lets him read books to himself, and a big LEGO dwarven mine. He was very happy with all of his gifts. After opening the presents we spent the rest of the morning playing with variuos toys. Cara put together the dwarven mine, which took a very long time, and I downloaded some books on the TAG system so Elias could read them. Later, after taking a walk, eating, and more playing, we all watched our favorite Christmas movie, Millions. Elias was so tired that he fell asleep at 5:30 and we made him a little bed on the floor. I think that's a sign of a good day.

P.S. Many thanks to Cara, who wrote most of the second half of this post after I put it off for three days.