Christmas Eve is the designated day to spend with my parents and sister. This year, we spent the day at my parents’ house, playing games, eating a lot of food and enjoying each other’s company.

We opened our gifts pretty early in the day. Avery is usually at her best in the mornings, and we wanted to be sure that she still got her normal nap time after lunch.

First up, Avery opened her gifts from Great Aunt Ann and Great Uncle Ron in Boise.


She got this adorable owl puppet…

…which she loves…
…plus some books.
Some of her other favorite gifts were a dog Pillow Pet…
…a duck towel and washcloth…
(which she started using right away)
…and a baby! She is so into babies right now. She carries them everywhere we go and is starting to pretend play with them. She was so excited when she opened this gift.

She waited very patiently as Daddy carefully performed surgery to get the baby out of the box. We decided to name this baby Holly since she was “born” on Christmas Day. Unfortunately, when Avery says “Holly,” it sounds like “Ollie,” which is the nickname for Aunt Karen’s cat, Oliver.
Babies require lots of equipment and accessories. So Avery also received this high chair. This is a special high chair because it belonged to me and Karen when we were younger. It was in great shape, but my parents recently painted it to freshen it up.
Avery loves putting her babies in the chair and feeding them meals. Sometimes, they even sit with us at the table during meals.
Grandma and Grandpa Hromada also gave Avery this princess tent. She likes to climb inside with her babies and either read books or play with her toys. She also likes to peak her head in the windows and say “Hi!”
She can say “tent” very clearly and sometimes will ask Mommy or Daddy to get inside with her. Chris laughs when he finds himself curled up inside a pink princess tent. But secretly, I know how much he loves having a little girl!
Her final big gift from my parents was this table with two matching chairs.
She likes to use her new tea set and food to feed all of her babies and animals. She goes around the table saying, “OK?” like she’s making sure no one needs anything else.

Following the festivities at my parents’ house, we went to the 11 p.m. service at church. While Avery slept in the car on the way there, she woke up as we walked into church. She was pretty quiet for the first half of the service, then she got a little more talkative and pointed out “Baby Jesus” in the videos on the big screen. I just hope she didn’t disturb the people around us!

And thank goodness she fell asleep pretty quickly when we got home.

Christmas in review: The Hromadas