Our Christmas 2012, Part Two (In Pictures)

If you missed part one, check it out here

So, when we left off from part one, Miss Zoey was rocking out on her new microphone–the one that Santa brought her. But she also took time out to be a princess:

Way to photo bomb, Scout

Then it was time to get ready to visit family for the rest of the day. First stop was Greg’s sister’s house. Zoey loved the fact that Aunt Kim let her drink juice out of a big girl cup and play with the remote that controls the speed that the lights on their Christmas tree blinked. She opened a couple more presents–some adorable clothes and a Fisher Price Little People Disney Princess castle. I spent the next twenty minutes or so putting together the castle together and let me tell you, I was actually pretty proud of myself when I was done and the thing didn’t fall apart.

After we spent a while at Kim’s house, we headed over to my parent’s house to celebrate Christmas with my side of the family.

Here’s the whole crew:

L-R: Cristy, Nate, Zac, Skylar, Mom, Dad, Seth, Rowan, Colleen, Keagan, Greg and Zoey

My mom had made special Christmas crackers–one for each of us–that lay on top of our dinner plate.

For those of you unfamiliar with what crackers of this nature are, they’re tubes of paper filled with candy or little toys for the kids. In the case of the adults, they were filled with candy and lotto tickets. Mom did a fantastic job with them and everyone liked opening theirs and seeing what was inside. Zoey was particularly excited to see stickers, bead necklaces and chocolate in hers.

As we all started loading up our plates with food, Zoey yelled across the table to my sister, Colleen, who was getting some salad for one of her daughters. She said, “Aunt Coddeen? I hab some saddad?” I mean, seriously, you guys, OMG the cuteness. She had also mooched a couple of pieces of ham off my dad when he was cutting it before dinner. She went up to him and said in a sweet voice, “I hab some?” And when he gave her a piece, she ran into the living room to show Greg and I that she got some.

After dinner, once everything was taken care of, we sat down to open presents.

Adorable

The tradition in my family is for each person to take a turn opening a present–in front of everyone else. Once every one has opened a present one at a time, the whole thing starts all over again. We start with the youngest and each take a turn. Zoey, being the youngest, was definitely ready to get started, although she had a hard time remembering to wait her turn after the first one. But really, what toddler is that patient on Christmas?

What’s in there?

Between opening presents, Zoey did some serious playing with the toys she had already opened:

Zoey and Ariel are going shopping

Zoey pushed that toy cart around from the living room to the kitchen and back again over and over again. And her new mermaid doll went along for the ride. Let me tell you–a little girl like Zoey pretending to grocery shop with her doll is just absolutely adorable. Heart melting.

But of course, nothing beats the box that stuff came in: