The most enjoyable part of Christmas this year was watching Easton and Layla discover the meaning of Christmas and the thrill of presents.
Opa told the Christmas story and the twins were able to understand the basics of why we celebrate.
However, because they have no memory of opening Christmas presents they were excited but had no idea why or what they were about to experience.
We had a leisurely wake up with breakfast and time for Uncle Casey to come join us. I thought they might be chomping at the bit to dig into the presents, but that wasn't the case. Next year though...
I don't have many candid pictures of Layla where she has a somber (non-smiling) look. She looks like a perfectly shaped, cute doll to me. A doll that gets taller and bigger by the day.
She sleeps in a Pack-N-Play, but this will be the last time we can rely on them because even sleeping diagonally she stretches from end to end.
And now for the presents! We are extremely grateful for the presents they received. The wrapping paper was ripping and tearing so fast that I wasn't able to get many pictures. Easton unwrapped the rockets and was excited even though he thought they were just a toy to play with inside the house. The next day we shot the rockets off in the park and he was amazed.
The fireman outfit was a big hit as well and I haven't even shown him how the fire extinguisher is functional when filled with water. We'll save that revelation for another day.
During our visit to Missouri last fall Daphne let Easton play with her Sonic Drive-in binoculars. Easton let out a little scream of enthusiasm when he opened Daphne's gift. What a thoughtful, kind thing to do!
For Christmas day we joined Oma's entire family at Aunt Suzies house, which is quickly becoming a tradition. Layla and Easton both fit right in with the cousins who included them in the playtime fun. Abby and Alyssa found Layla's joyful spirit particularly interesting.
Since I don't have a panoramic lens on the Canon S90 this is the best I can do for showing the family togetherness. Here's one half of the people gathered around the Christmas tree for round two of opening presents.
We saved Layla's chest of princess dresses as the gift to open at Aunt Suzies. It would be impossible to go wrong with such a gift. As you may expect she dove right in! Now instead of one princess dress, she has enough for wardrobe changes throughout the day.
Easton opened his John Deere Excavator, which will be awesome for the sand parks back in Arizona.
During a lull in activities all of the kids gathered in a back bedroom. I went in to see why the house was orders of magnitude quieter than the previous hour. I found them huddled around 7 inch screen of a DVD player watching Despicable Me.
A few other cousins had really nice cameras flashing all day so I didn't take too many pictures of the adults. I did capture one of Kendra and her cousin Brian. She thinks very highly of all the Thomas cousins and has lots of great memories growing up. This is part of the reason she wants Easton and Layla to experience cousin time so much.
Casey wins the "most fun relative" award based on how much Easton and Layla laugh and play around him. Here you can see Layla after a wardrobe change into the Sleeping Beauty outfit. By the way, Layla vehemently declines all nap time or quiet time. The Sleeping Beauty outfit has nothing to do with the sleeping and everything to do with the beauty.
We took time during the family get together for the official 4 Webb's Christmas 2010 picture.
and just for fun here is the Christmas 2009 picture in front of the same tree
and the oh-so-cute Santa and Ms. Clause picture from Christmas 2008.
Kendra and I had a conversation about what was different this Christmas compared to the past two. We unanimously agree this year was ten times easier and more enjoyable. The reason is because we were able to let the twins wander around the house with their cousins and no parental interaction. We didn't have to worry about them falling down or getting hurt or needing our attention. We were able to have actual conversations with the adult relatives instead of 30 seconds of comments followed by 5 minutes of focus on the twins, then repeat for 4 hours.
To make a short story long, parenting is noticeably easier and much more fun over the last six months or so. Taking this many days off from work in a row and staying with Oma and Opa really gave me a chance to reflect. Seems like we are so busy that all of my spare brain cycles are spent taking care of the present while planning for the future. The past doesn't get much attention, but occasionally I spend some time on it. I'll do a year in review post in the next few days to wrap up 2010!
See you soon!
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