Merry Christmas

We had a whirlwind Christmas jam-packed with fun, family, and loads of presents. The celebration started with the usual Christmas Eve rituals: Elsa left out cookies for Santa and then went to bed, while Mommy and Daddy stayed up practically until dawn, frantically putting together toys and wrapping presents. That's already becoming a Christmas tradition around here. Here's Elsa with her cookies (I would actually love it if she would STOP smiling for the camera these days, since her smile is so contrived, but it is pretty amusing).
And here she is on Christmas morning, inspecting the crumbs. (I remember, as a kid, regarding this as particularly strong evidence that Santa did, in fact, exist—although, if I was looking for evidence, that must mean that I already suspected something was fishy.)
Yes, Elsa did get the much-requested train from Santa. We put it together for her the night before, which allowed her to dive right into playing with it the moment she came down the stairs on Christmas morning. However, this plan backfired when she flat-out refused to open any presents after that. She was way too busy playing with the train to be bothered with other toys and gifts.
Fortunately, another one of her presents, a pony hop-ball, turned out to be a worthy distraction. She's still too short to bounce on it by herself, but with Bob's help, she had a great time.
In addition to the train and the hop-ball, "Santa" brought Elsa some tinker toys, a Dora Magic Markers coloring book, a Melissa & Doug floor puzzle similar to the ocean-life puzzle she was obsessed with a few months ago, and a Very Hungry Caterpillar board game. From us, she got a Dora "fancy fiesta dress," several packages of those giant cardboard blocks that look like bricks (which Bob can attest were a pain to put together), and a Disney Princess Memory Game.
I have to admit, as Bob and I were putting together the train on Christmas Eve, we both reminisced about unwrapping what seemed like hundreds of presents when we were kids, and we felt kind of guilty about Elsa's relatively small haul. But it's an understatement to say that she doesn't need much, and since she's still too young to really ask for things, I thought it made sense to scale it back this year. That was obviously the right decision, since she could hardly even be talked into opening the presents she did get. I'm guessing next Christmas will be very different in many respects—we'll probably end up longing for the good ol' days of only nine presents!

We finished off Christmas Day with dinner at the Heinrichs', where Elsa and Karina so enjoyed dancing with the various musical Christmas toys that we eventually had to hide them to save our own sanity.

Elsa also liked playing with the "noculars" with Opa.

And of course there was another flurry of gift-unwrapping. Elsa got this dump truck from Katie, another favorite on her list of gifts. She also really loves the little stuffed pony she got from Aunt Beth and a little bear from Sharon and Heather (she sure does like miniature stuffed animals). Other favorites were a race car track with cars and some puzzles from Opa and Grandma.
Christmas in Michigan, coming up next!