Christmas continued :)

Christmas morning

 

Our Christmas has been an extended event this year...  

Annie started it all with a "multicultural holiday program" for the Baby Gator kids... which I have subtitled "festive controlled chaos."  They had nearly 200 children ages 2-5 on the stage at the same time.  Annie was in the youngest group which sang their 3 songs and then headed into the audience to sit with the families.  She was a little overwhelmed at first and actually had some degree of stagefright, but warmed up to it after the clapping for Jingle Bells and proceeded to enjoy herself more for the subsequent songs about Latkes and Kwanzaa candles. She's the one with the blue bow in her hair in this short video clip, looking all around.



For our Christmas celebrations, we then had the Massini family here on the 23rd (see the last post!), went to the children's mass on Christmas Eve, had our private family Christmas day, and the Calabrese side was here on the 29th.  

Annie has loved every minute of it.  The only minor disappointment was that when we went to "see Baby Jesus" on Christmas, the nativity figurine was not a real baby. I think she was expecting it to be like when she met Eric for the first time.  Luckily we have one cute living baby in the house to keep her occupied.

 




 

 

 




 

 

When my parents and Doug and Sarah were here, everyone was pretty worn out after the gift exchange--everyone but Annie, who was popping bubble wrap and commented that it was "just like on the Hi-pad, mama!" Apparently it was her first time with the real stuff.

At one point, Annie decided that the nativity figures needed to hear some guitar music, or maybe that she needed an audience. She got the stepstool from the bathroom (Me: "what are you doing with the stepstool?", Annie: "Baby Jesus"), got the figures, lined them all up on the ottoman, and serenaded them with Jingle Bells and Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.

We completed things with a visit to Sally and Nathan this past weekend.  Papa, Gigi, and Lili met us over there for one last visit before Lisa had to return to school. The usual wildness ensued, but we were actually able to get some group photos with everyone sitting still, awake, smiling, and generally looking in the direction of the cameras. :)

 

On the Thursday after Christmas, the kids and I also made a quick trip up to Tallahassee to catch up with 2 friends from college and their 3 girls.  Beatrice just turned one, and this was the first time I'd met her.  Annie had SO much fun with Greta and Eloise.  "Mama, I did see Ellie!" is all I kept hearing afterward. These are the only pictures I got, at the very end of the day. 

Lucy was kind enough to share some more (and better!) pictures of the fun. 

You can almost hear the happy shrieking in these "snuggling" pictures. Annie insisted that there was thunder, so they needed to get in the bed and snuggle.

And my favorite:

 

Eric and Beatrice had to hang out with the adults, being less mobile, but Eric seemed to enjoy himself, and he traveled well.  I like his face in the picture with me.

Annie tried the same thunder/snuggle trick with Charlie this weekend, but he wasn't fooled. Bella did have to come over to see what all the action was.

Now that all that fun is over, we are getting back to reality. Eric started daycare today, and I go back to work next Monday.  More to come on those adventures soon.