Christmas Day!

Christmas was so exciting this year! Claire is finally at the age where she is beginning to understand what Christmas is all about. Well, the commercial side of Christmas. :) Christmas morning was very entertaining with our little Claire Bear. Again, here are some of my favorite moments that I hope I will remember forever:

• getting Claire out of bed and telling her that Santa came - she wasn't quite sure what was going on at this point
• watching her turn the corner to see all of the presents under the tree and a stocking full of toys and food
• showing Claire the letter Santa left for her - she looked at it like she was actually trying to read it; too cute!

• opening my one present under the tree - a new camera lens; the box was actually empty and I had been using the lens on my camera for the past two weeks...I wanted to experiment with it before using it on such an important day like Christmas...and I LOVE it!
• watching Erik open a few presents that were kept secret - his favorite gift this year was a golf range finder (which he knew about); he also got a book (The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell) and some new shoes which were returned (of course)
• seeing how happy Khloe was to get a new tennis ball - I've been a little concerned about her lately because she hadn't been as enthusiastic about playing with her toy balls like she used to; but she must have just wanted a new ball because she was back to her old self again, yay!

• observing Claire as she opened gift after gift - she absolutely loved her new water bottle; some other favorites were a wooden rocking horse, a toy cell phone, a Tag reader from her Taylor cousins, and a train set
• loving Claire's bed head - I'm sure when she looks back at these pictures she'll ask me why I put makeup on myself but wouldn't brush her hair :)
• looking around at our house an hour later and thinking it was odd how messy it was - we only bought Claire about 5 gifts and ourselves only 1 or 2; somehow the wrapping paper managed to take up the entire living room
• making a mental note to myself to wrap the gifts just like I did this year - half of the wrapped presents under the tree were empty boxes; I knew Claire would want to open things up, but for the bigger items (for example the rocking horse and train set) and anything that needed assembly, we put together and hid the item under a blanket...it was the best of both worlds and is definitely the way to go!

• rushing to the Osmond's house for breakfast - it was delicious
• laughing as we all tried to play songs with our bells and it not really sounding right - Bestemore was very amused (see below)!
• talking to Soren (Claire's cousin) about orca dolphins which are his new obsession
• rolling my eyes at Claire after I took a picture of her with Farmor - as a photographer and her mother, her fake smile is really getting annoying :)

• watching Vivian (Claire's cousin) give back the envelope of money to Bestemore who had just given it to her - the best part was that Bestemore had no idea what was going on and probably thought it was a gift for her
• looking over to see Bestemore help Claire with her water bottle - Bestemore is very cautious about things and so this was very amusing to watch 

• taking the annual family photo - we were a small group this year as none of the Osmond kids were in town 

• going to Erik's parents house to open presents once again
• Claire was very excited to get a new baby - the package said her name was Harper Olivia, but Farmor thought that was a little odd and named her Baby Olivia (since then, Claire cannot say Olivia and has started calling her Baby Muria)
• everyone was very amused at my wrapping skills for Erik's Dad's present - he always uses a blade of some sort so he doesn't rip any paper and therefore always wants Ranae to save it for another year...this year I used all of my wrapping paper / ribbon scraps so he wouldn't feel the need to save anything; everyone thought it was hilarious that there were two different kinds of wrapping paper and that the ribbon didn't even go all the way around the gift 
• trying to coerce Claire into opening more presents - it was around 2pm and you could tell she had had enough; based on the photo below, I guess even the plain side of some wrapping paper was amusing

• trying to take a decent family photo - they never turn out great, but I guess we have documentation that we were all there enjoying the day together
• Claire enjoying a nice long nap after all of the house visits were over with
• last but not least...going to Denny's and enjoying a French Toast Slam with my little family; what a day!

Special Note:

 

Below are two of my favorite photos from Christmas day - Khloe enjoying the snow and Claire's

bum crack (they just don't make toddler pants very play friendly...between Claire and her

cousin Soren's pants, we saw a lot of bum cracks that day)