Wonderful Christmastime

Merry Christmas! It's been a long season leading up to this one big moment, and for Madison, it was magical. Once again, we had to wake her up - last night was such a late night, following a long day. But when the realization hit her exactly what day today was, she was rip-roarin' and ready to go! She marched out of her bedroom and immediately met Indiana Jones - not the real one, of course. But there was a large 2D cutout, life-sized, and he was wearing a Santa hat and was holding a present. Other presents were under her pink tree, right there next to her bedroom. This was just the warm-up, because right downstairs was a big pile of presents just waiting for Madison to open!

We had time to open all of our presents at the house this morning - before returning to Nana and Ye-Ye's house. Above you can see Mommy and Madison wearing some gifts from Daddy: a few of those animal hats that seem so fashionable the last year or so. Madison has a panda, of course. And Mommy's hat was picked by both Madison and Daddy - it'll be fun to see them wear this on a cold wintery day.

We could go on and on about what was opened - the highlight is the Kinect, which we'll be playing tomorrow. Madison got a game "Disneyland" for the Kinect, which was, as she put it, "Just what I wanted!" Several occasions, she'd open a gift and exclaim, "Oh my!"

But soon it was time to head over to Nana and Ye-Ye's house! It's tradition to have Christmas morning there together as a family, so we put on our new Christmas socks and drove over to find the family waiting there, ready to hand out presents - and in some cases, more ready to actually open them. Here's a photo of the cousins, just before the madness of unwrapping. David and Hannah played "Santa's elves" this year, distributing the presents to everyone, making small piles of gift boxes for each family member to unwrap. All we were waiting for was the word "Go!"

Of course, Madison couldn't sit by idly. She had to help out too, running gifts to everyone. Despite everyone's promise to "cut back a bit," as usual we had a lot of things under the tree, especially for the kids. One by one they all were opened up. Daddy got several things he wanted, as did Mommy and everyone else. And soon, and the gifts were opened. Except one!

What is it? Madison was peeking at this huge, covered item in the kitchen. What could it possibly be? It says it is from Santa, and the thing is positively big. Madison wanders around the back of it to see what it could be, and that's when it dawns on her:

It's a puppet theater! For the last few weeks, Ye-Ye has been working very hard on creating a puppet theater for Madison, and this thing is simply a masterpiece. Here's an image of Madison already playing with it, using some of the puppets she got earlier in the morning:

Ye-Ye made this from scratch. He bought the wood and the moulding, and bought the paint. And following some instructions online, he put this together himself. It looks fantastic! Madison enjoyed this for quite some time in the morning, and will be enjoying this for many years to come. So will the rest of us too! Already, she was putting on some puppet shows for us, reenacting the story of Christmas, using sock puppets for angels.

Great Grandma - or "G-Gma" joined us for Christmas - Aunt Shain and Nana went to get her from White County, while the rest of us stayed at the house to prepare dinner, play with our toys, and watch Disney's Christmas Parade. It was a neat parade - it looks like it is a combination of everything we've ever seen there: bits of the Animal Kingdom parade, the Hollywood Studios parade, the Boo-to-You Parade and of course the Merry Christmas Party parade. It looked pretty epic. And... it looked pretty crowded. Much better watching it on television! But somewhere on there was a commercial for their cruise line, and that got us excited about 2012. Seems like not long ago we were watching the new cruise ship get christened, and this year hopefully we'll be on it!

Dinner was absolutely delicious. David and Jonathan were helping to cook, so there was this fun, frantic atmosphere in the kitchen. But it all pulled together, and we all stood around in a circle like the Who's in Whoville, holding hands - and Ye-Ye led us in a prayer as always, reminding us what Christmas is all about. Madison doesn't need much in that direction: when you ask her what today is, she'll always respond, "It's Baby Jesus' Birthday!"

We stayed over at the house until around 6 pm, at which point all the grown-ups were pretty much wiped out! We said our goodbyes, and promised to see each other again soon. Which is probably tomorrow, as Ye-Ye is going to deliver the puppet theater over here. Maybe we'll go see some lights again too, but that all depends on our energy levels.

Mommy and Daddy still had presents to exchange tonight, so we went back to the great room by the tree, and opened even more gifts for each other - and Daddy and Madison popped in one of her Christmas presents: "Disney Universe." It's a new video game that Daddy likes too, of course. We played that until much later than we probably should have - but it's okay. Tomorrow we can all sleep in. It was a very full day, filled with love and joy. Tonight, we will all sleep in heavenly peace.