Whew, I sure love the Holidays but, it is soooo exhausting being the adult in 
them. Although way more fun! Claire loved all things Christmas. Christmas trees, Christmas lights, Santa (until we asked her to sit on his lap, then not so much), ornaments, and who can forget presents. On Christmas Eve with Levi’s family, Claire got absolutely spoiled (food, utensils, cookware for her kitchen, clothes, a doll house, etc.) and we got all done and she said, “More presents?”, I don’t know where we’d put anymore!
But we really tried hard to teach her about the more important aspects of Christmas. We attended a festival of nativities in the beginning of December. There was live music, a gym full of nativities from all over the world made from everything from gingerbread, to plastic, stone and fabric and a wonderful little Bethlehem play area for kids that included a tent full of wheat (random I know but the kids would not come out of there!). It was amazing! We were telling Claire about each member of the nativit
y and we pointed to baby Jesus (she knows adult Jesus) and asked her who it was and she said “Baby!”, I said “Yes, baby who?” and then Claire said “Baby Who!” I think by the time Christmas rolled around she understood that it was baby Jesus but “baby who” was so cute!
Christmas Morning was so much fun! Although staying up till 2 in the morning was not the greatest idea. Claire was so so so slow at opening her stocking. I was expecting that she was just going to rip into her stocking, dump everything out, throw it aside and move on to her bigger presents. But she took each item out, inspected it, told us what it was and either wanted to eat it or play with it. We were so anxious so we kept telling her to keep going faster but it was truly adorable. It was finally time to unveil her present from Santa, she pulled the blanket off and this is the expression we saw… priceless!
We were worried that she would play with it for a day and then be bored with it, but 2 weeks later and she’s still cooking all sorts of delicious food for us. The only problem being that she know thinks that she can really cook. The other day she hopped the gate, opened the fridge, took out the eggs (18 count) cracked all but one and got most of them into a plastic container. Several days later we found an egg in a random drawer, silly girl. Apparently this
all happened in just a couple minutes when Levi was looking for something but he couldn’t even be mad at her because it was so adorable. So he fished the broken shell bits out and they scrambled them up for lunch. That girl can sure gobble up eggs!
Christmas day included a stop at the Borts’, I don’t think their menu could have been more delicious! We’re so lucky to have such wonderful friends whose whole family has adopted us. We then spent the afternoon at my parents’ house and got to see my baby brother and his wife, Carina (Uncle Ewic and Aunt Ina) for the first time in 6 months. It was so good to spend so much time with them while they were here. Claire loves them both so much, I love seeing her interact with her aunts & uncles. The day after Christmas we 
went to Zoo Lights with my mom (thanks for the zoo membership!), Eric and Carina, and we all had a blast despite the near freezing temp and sprinkles. We had to be shuttled in because the zoo parking lot was so full but who knew that would turn out to be such an exciting event for Claire. She was mesmerized by all the lights, as were we. I hadn’t been since I was a little kid and Levi wasn’t sure he’d ever been.
It’s always a little sad for me when the holidays are over. There’s not much to look forward to for the next couple months and no more paid holidays off until memorial day, that seems so far away, but I’m sure it’ll be here before we know it. Well I better get to bed, I hope you all enjoyed the holidays as much as we did, Happy New Year!
