Be jolly, by golly!

As we do every year we spent Christmas Eve morning at our house opening presents as our little family of three. This year has been very exciting because Chaz "gets it." He gets the magic of Christmas. He is very excited for Santa to visit his house and to give gifts to others. It is actually very sweet how excited he is about giving to others. The night before we started the first of many years where we stayed up WAY too late putting the final touches on the "visit." It is a tradition in my family to give cards. I have always given my parents, brother and Ryan a card on Christmas day. When Chaz was born I continued this tradition. Chaz always signs his card to daddy, this year was no different. Daddy was out running last minute errands so I put Chaz and the card on the floor and let him go to town.

When he told me he was drawing Daddy a picture I was very intrigued as his "drawings" are still scribbles. But he came up with this masterpiece "Mr. Ryan Hill Snowman." He obviously named it himself. He then explained the details of the snowman. The big circle in the middle is the snowman's head, the two squiggly marks in the head are the eyes, the "v" at the bottom of the head is his mouth, the squigglies coming out the side of the head are his arms, he obviously has hair and the long lines at the bottom are his legs which are complete with shoes. I am just a little proud of my little Picasso.

"Santa" was bringing Chaz a cool art easel so it was a must for him to put it together. This event was complete with the frustration of building a child's toy.
At one point I looked up and saw this.....I HAD to take a picture. If you know me, you know my house is clean 99% of the time....let's just say we definately took that remaining 1% and ran with it!! What a mess!!! After multiple hours of sitting on the floor and wrapping, everything was ready.....including the BIG smile on my face.
Once we realized that Chaz understood the "Santa" concept, my dad said we needed to do something he would really remember. We thought about dressing up like Santa but we couldn't find a good suit or a good person to be Santa (maybe next year, any volunteers??) Once this was a fail we decided to use fake snow and jingle bells to show Chaz that Santa had been to our house. This was SUCH a success. If you ask him anything about this Christmas this is what he tells you "Santa came to my house and put snow on my floor. And jingle bells!!!"
It went all the way from the living room, down the hall and to his bedroom. This is what dropped while he was checking on him. Of course, Santa had to check on Chaz to make sure he was asleep ;)and there were three tiny jungle bells in his bed next to him. Santa dropped these in his bed to make sure he was really asleep. and the bells that were outside..because I guess this year Santa decided to use the front door.. It was cuter, don't judge!The snow lead from the front door to the living room.He was FLOORED, I mean FLOORED! He was over the moon excited to see the snow and bells. I simply cannot explain the excitement in words. This makes me so happy! To see the magic in a little ones eyes is something that is unexplainable. Not sure why he only had on one sock but I thought it was cute. He followed the trail of snow from his room to the front door. Ryan was trying to point out the bells on the front porch and said "Look, look what Santa left!"

Chaz said "COOL, jingle bells and the paper!" HA!!

At this point, Chaz had not noticed any of the toys in the living room. When he turned from the front door and could see the living room, I was able to get this awesome shot of his honest reaction. Success!and then he saw the Batcave. Now let me tell you a little about the Batcave. It is something he saw in the store around........Halloween...and he has talked about it every.single.day since. Everytime we would go to Target or Walmart or Toys R Us, he would say "We need to go visit the Batcave!!" He would then take us directly to it, pull it off the shelf and play with it for as long as he was allowed. When it was time to go he would say "Bye Batcave. See you next time" Now don't judge but I have to admit, I really didn't want to purchase this toy. Not because he wanted it, but because it was big and it had a lot of pieces and parts that could/would get lost. But after a few months of him visiting the Batcave I figured it was a must. So I caved. Pun intended. But after seeing THIS reaction it will all be worth it.

He was literally beside himself with excitement. He was puting his hands up and down, next to his head, pointing, yelling "BATCAVE!! SANTA BROUGHT SNOW AND A BATCAVE" and giggling uncontrollably. I wish I would have had my video camera at that very moment. Priceless. I will forever have this memory emblazened in my brain. Then it was stocking time, talk about bursting a little kid's bubble. He went from cloud nine to ground level very quickly. Wah, Wah. He then realized, after all the excitement died down, that he had only one sock on.. well, we will take care of that!

And back to the Batcave. Yes, this is the giant piece of plastic, with a bunch of pieces and parts (soon to be lost) that brings my child unexplainable joy.
I can't believe I am even going to admit this but I actually had to bribe my 3 year-old into opening his presents this year. He did not want to move 6 inches away from the Batcave in order to open these beautiful presents.
We would have to rip a portion of the paper or poke a hold in the paper in order to coax him into opening the gift. Pathetic, I know.

He was quickly tired of the paparazzi. "I told you not to take my picture. I am opening my presents!" and then it was Mommy's turn to ooh and ahh.. My wish came true! My wonderful boys got me an iPad. I am not quite sure why I wanted one so bad, but I did. I had no problem waiting until Christmas but by the time it got here I REALLY wanted it. AND my sweet husband had something printed on the back of the iPad. It says "I love you, You're the best. Christmas 2010 Love Daddy and Chaz" Every night before bed and every morning when I leave for work, my little guy tells me "I love you, You're the best!" It melts my heart every time. I wish we could put some of the Christmas spirit in jars and open a jar every month ~Harlan Miller