Christmas Eve is the day we have designated to be with my parents and sister. The day usually includes relaxing, eating, playing games and opening gifts. We enjoyed two new board games this year: The Logo Board Game and Word on the Street. We highly recommend both of them. They’re great family games!
Here’s Avery with her mound of gifts.
Aunt Karen and Mommy got some gifts, too. After each of the adults opened one gift, Avery opened two. And she still was the last one done!
She is very excited about this Winnie the Pooh storybook from her Great Aunt Ann and Great Uncle Ron.
She was even more excited about the collection of art supplies from Ann and Ron.
The art supplies included paint, markers and crayons. Ann is a great artist herself, and I’m sure she’s trying to develop those talents in Avery, who is a budding artist as well. These fun and messy items accompanied a bigger present that Avery opened on Christmas Day. You’ll see that gift tomorrow.
Grandma Hromada made a lot of clothes for Avery, including a cat scarf-mitten combo and two sets of pajamas. I’m glad my mom picked up sewing again since Avery was born. She made so many clothes for me and Karen, so I’m excited to see Avery enjoying these special homemade outfits, too.
No offense to anyone who gave gifts to Avery this year, but I think this easily was her favorite gift. Karen gave her this large musical jewelry box with a spinning ballerina. But the best part was inside. The jewelry box was filled with bracelets, rings, necklaces and even sticker earrings (a fond memory from my own childhood!). At first, Avery put all of the rings on one finger. She’s getting better about distributing them among all of her fingers now. And we go through at least one pair of sticker earrings every day. We’ll need to replenish her supply at her birthday!
To complement the jewelry box, Avery also got her first tutu along with a sweet book called I Wear My Tutu Everywhere.
KK deserved lots of hugs and kisses for these awesome gifts!
Grandpa thought the tutu looked better on his head than on Avery’s waist.
And what’s a family get-together without some Wii? Avery loves playing Duel. She loves pushing her opponents off the platform and watching them fall into the water. She hasn’t figured out yet why she wins every single game!
Our original plan was to let Avery sleep for a little while at my parents’ house then wake her up to go to the 11 p.m. Christmas Eve service at our church. But she wasn’t very interested in sleeping, which meant we had a wound up little girl who was wide awake at 9:30 p.m. So, much to my disappointment, we skipped church. But I know the people who would have sat near us during the service were glad we weren’t there with a chatty, excited Avery.
When we got home, we prepared some cookies and milk for Santa. We also put out some carrots for the reindeer. Avery wasn’t too sure about the whole Santa thing this year. At the mall, she waved at him from a distance. And she talked about him a lot. But she didn’t like the idea of him being in her house. We explained to her that Santa visits when we’re all asleep, and he doesn’t have time to stay long at our house since he needs to visit all of the other boys and girls. She kind of understood that, but she still was looking around the corner for him on Christmas morning!
