My parents came into town the weekend before Christmas and stayed until the Sunday after Christmas. It was so great to have them here to spend time with.
The Sunday before Christmas we went up to Cedar for the annual Sorensen family Christmas party. It was a fun night of food, visiting, and white elephant gifts. The kids also all get a present from our host, Wendy (she is so awesome to do that!). Calin got a stuffed horse that he was super excited about! I didn't have my camera with me, but stole this pic from Hollie.
Monday we enjoyed some time with my parents and left Calin with them for a little while so we could finish up some last minute Christmas shopping. Every year I say that I am going to have all the shopping done before Thanksgiving and it never happens. Maybe next year...
Christmas Eve we spent most of the day getting some more Christmas stuff done and then hung out over at my grandma's house with my parents and my sister Becca once she got into town. That afternoon we went to Golden Corral with Robby's family for a late lunch/early dinner. That is their Christmas Eve tradition and it was fun to be there for the first time since Robby and I have been together.
After that we went back over to my Grandma's to hang out while my family got their Christmas Eve dinner ready. This is the first year our family hasn't been in Oregon in a long time so our Christmas Eve traditions didn't happen. Glad they came here to see us though! After my family sat down for their dinner we left to go over to Tracee and Austin's house for their Christmas Eve of snacks, games, and the classic acting out of the nativity. The costumes were quite interesting... :)
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| Calin and Robby are the wisemen. Austin and Jimmy are supposed to be the shepherds. Preston also makes an excellent "cow"... |
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| Calin kept himself entertained most of the night racing cars like he always does. Thank goodness Austin has a good collection of cars and track for when we are over there. |
After all the fun had wound down for Christmas Eve we got Calin home to have our own little bit of Christmas Eve together as a family putting cookies out for Santa, listening to Cinnamon Bear, and enjoying the Christmas tree, lights, and music together. This was especially fun for Robby who has just loved Christmas and was so excited to do all these fun things with Calin. I think Robby loves Christmas more than most kids all combined together. He is pretty awesome and makes things lots of fun! Christmas was much more exciting with him around!
It was good to get Calin to bed though, Christmas Eve started his extra clingy behavior that I thought was just due to the craziness of all the back and forth and parties and people. However, Christmas day we started noticing his nose was stuffy and he just didn't seem to feel good.
Despite him not feeling well, he was such a tropper all day long for everything that we did Christmas day. It was a long, busy, fun packed day. We didn't start too early with Christmas presents. Thankfully Calin slept until about 7:30. Calin was pretty excited to come out and see the lights on and all the presents.
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| Checking everything out |
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| Getting ready to dig into his stocking. |
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| He was very excited about all the new hot wheels cars that were in his stocking and his new hat. There were lots of fun things in there and he was just ready to play with them all. |
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| Loving his new hot wheels! |
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| After opening some more presents. He was loading all his new hot wheels into his new dump truck. |
All morning opening presents we would unwrap something and he would say "open open". He was just so excited to play with the toys. My one regret was rushing him through opening. However it could have gone all day because he didn't want to leave one toy behind to open another one. Next year I will have to try to just let him play and then move on to another present when he is ready. However, we did enjoy having new toys to open and play with over the next few days and week (I hid toys and opened them slowly to draw it out) and he enjoyed something new every day.
Santa brought Calin a new Strider bike. I have a long video of me basically opening the wrapping and box for him. At that point he was not super interested in opening the wrapping. I had to help him get it going. He was pretty excited about his bike though and we took him outside to try it out.
We finished up opening presents at our house and then drove over to have breakfast and presents with my family at my grandma's. Breakfast is always a big deal at our house for Christmas so I was really glad we got to go and enjoy my parents delicious Christmas breakfast. Breakfast is somehow always so much better when someone else makes it! :) Especially on Christmas morning!
After breakfast we did presents with my family. It took us a couple hours to get through presents because we stopped to Skype with Allie and Erich in Minnesota and Josef and Summer in Provo. It was a fun filled morning and we were spoiled with wonderful gifts from everyone!
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| Calin was quite excited to dig into that massive bag and find a bag of blocks from Erich and Allie. |
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| Skyping and playing with blocks. |
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| More skyping with the whole crew this time one on each i-pad. |
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| Aunt Becca got Calin this awesome Duplo set. He was enjoying checking out the pictures and then wanted to "open open!". He has loved playing with it! |
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| Grandma and Grandpa Mielke got Calin this cute dinosaur helmet to wear with this new bike. |
Trying out his bike with the family and had to be riding by Mia.
After his very grumpy bike ride (he really didn't want to be riding) we decided he had had enough for the morning and took Calin home for his nap so we could be ready for Christmas dinner with the Comefords at 2:30. He took a pretty good nap, but I could tell he was still not feeling great when he woke up. He really was such a trooper all day long though considering he wasn't feeling well.
Once Calin woke up we went over to Robby's parents for Christmas dinner and to open presents with his family. Once again we were spoiled with lots of great presents from everyone! Calin was especially spoiled by all his cousins, aunts and uncles, and all his grandparents. He got so many new fun toys to play with and had all kinds of fun things for the next few weeks to play with and discover! He is still enjoying all his toys even now at the end of January! It was a good Christmas for him!
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| Checking out his duplos from Grandma and Grandpa Comeford with Gracie. |
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| The aftermath of all the present opening. |
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| Checking out presents and visiting. |
We hung out at the Comeford's for a while and were able to go outside and enjoy the nice weather. Calin never did make it into real clothes and ended up staying in his "Christmas Jammies" (like the Christmas card song he was "in his Christmas Jammies") all day. He was very excited to ride bikes with Preston and also enjoyed trying out Gracie's new jump rope too.
After we hung out with Robby's family for the afternoon we went back over to have our second dinner with my family. It was a late dinner though so we were starting to get hungry again. We ate dinner and then left to get our tired sick boy home to bed. It was a great Christmas and we were so blessed to be able to spend it with both of our families. Robby was very great to share his time with my family while they were here! I'm very lucky to have such a great man who is always making sacrifices for me! It was so wonderful to spend Christmas with our little family and I enjoyed seeing how excited Calin and Robby were for all the fun of Christmas! We were very blessed and were sad to see Christmas come to an end.
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