Merry Christmas (With a sheepish smile)

Do I know myself well or what? I do believe I wished you all a Happy New Year early in anticipation of being extremely late on this post! Apparently I can predict the future. Any who-onto our wonderful Christmas. :) (I do apologize, by the way, for the long delay.)

Who knew having a child would triple the number of packages under your Christmas tree? I sure didn't anticipate that! For the whole week leading up to Christmas we had packages arriving almost every day; most of them with Cole's name on them! It was such a hoot to see all the goodies under our tree waiting for him. It was even better knowing that he had no clue what it all meant so he wasn't asking everyday to open anything. Since Christmas landed on a Sunday this year we did go to church first thing in the morning. When we got home we had a quick lunch and then opened all our (Cole's) presents before heading off to Nana and Nandad's house. I managed to get photos of Cole opening all his gifts from our out-of-town relatives so they could see him with his gifts. I loved that Cole was so interested in every single gift he opened. We were the ones pushing him to open the next gift, promising he could play with or read that a little bit later. I think if this happens again next year we will have the 12 days of Christmas before Christmas and let him open 1 gift every day so he can have some time to enjoy each one before moving onto the next.

Here are some of the pictures we took and all of Cole's fabulous gifts. Thank you again to all our family for the wonderful gifts you sent! You all sure do know Cole VERY well. :)

Cole did get to open one gift early...

It was a fleece jacket from Great Nana and Great Poppa!!!

Very cool puzzles from Gia and Pepere.

And books too!

A drum full of instruments from Aunt Donna, Uncle Roger, and our cousins!

Playing the trumpet!

Bang, bang, bang

A book from Aunt Donna too!

He wanted to sit and read every book he got. It was really cute. :)

A BIG box from Grandpa and Grandma...

Wood blocks!!!!!!

Oh my, what could this be???

 (I love that it was so much taller than Cole!)

A guitar from Grandpa and Grandma!

It even has a head microphone. Love it!

Lots of books from Uncle Bruce and Aunt Jane.

And books from Cousin Julie too!

We love Corduroy! Good choice Julie!

This is Cole's Christmas picture! LOVE IT!

So, VERY belated Merry Christmas to everyone! We love you!