Christmas 2015

This is the first year we’ve ever spent Christmas in Atlanta. In our own home. In fact we hosted others for Christmas at our house. And we have one kid and another on the way. When did I become such a grown up?

Anyways we had a really wonderful Christmas that I didn’t want to end. Is anything better than having a toddler on Christmas morning and watching their eyes light up about everything? And I don’t mean just toys – seeing Maddie Grace’s excitement about having family visiting, seeing all the food, watching the lights on the tree, playing with the ‘choo choo’ around the tree… it was all pretty magical. So no, the answer is there isn’t anything better, at least that I’ve experienced. Next year (or maybe the year after) when she understands Santa and all that maybe I’ll edit this.

We kicked off the start to Tom’s little work break on the day before Christmas Eve by going to the aquarium and having a great time with the penguins, dolphins, and “fishies! fishies! fishies!”

On Christmas Eve my dad got here and on Christmas day my brother also joined us as well. We let Maddie Grace come downstairs and see all the presents and she looked at us and said “eat! eat! eat!” so we realized she was way more interested in the food she could smell cooking than the presents. So instead of presents we started with Christmas brunch featuring one of my favorite recipes – sausage and cream cheese pinwheels.

After Maddie Grace was fed we finally got her to show some interest in presents and she enjoyed unwrapping them and of course immediately wanted to play with her new stuff. We didn’t get her a ton – she has so much stuff so I stuck with little presents that I knew she would love. And sure enough every present she got was a hit, and she didn’t seem disappointed at all in the number of gifts… in fact I’m certain she has no clue that it wasn’t a lot. After presents we had a nice dinner, watched Christmas movies, and tried (but failed) to go to bed early.

Our weather here for Christmas was warm, muggy, and rainy. So when Saturday we saw the sun was out and that it wasn’t supposed to rain we took advantage of it and we took Maddie Grace to the zoo with Grandpa. The zoo is probably MG’s favorite place to go – I’m pretty certain she’s going to be a zoologist or vet when she grows up. It felt so nice to get out of the house some and spend time outdoors watching Maddie Grace in her happiest place. She did her hand motions to tell the animals to come see her while shouting “come here! come here!” – none seemed to understand her though which was disappointing.

It was still nice later in the day so we went to the park with Maddie Grace before having another family dinner of Christmas leftovers.

Sunday we wanted to do some after Christmas shopping and take Maddie Grace to the pink pig – an Atlanta staple every holiday season. It’s basically a pig train for kids at the mall. I thought it was kind of creepy and incredibly hot in the tent for it (I guess they didn’t think that it would be 80 degrees in December). Kids love it though and Maddie Grace was talking about the ‘choo choo’ all afternoon afterwards so it was a hit for her!

Now Tom has the whole week off (so crazy) so we are looking forward to some relaxing, a lot of work around the house, and hopefully more family fun activities around Atlanta. I hope everyone out there had great Christmases and got to enjoy quality time with their families and loved ones this year!