Christmas 2012

We had one full Christmas holiday! My mom came to visit Friday before Christmas so we were able to get some time visiting with her before the rest of the family arrived Christmas eve and Christmas day. Friday night Anthony and I went out to dinner for our anniversary and it was so strange to go somewhere without James! Dinner was wonderful and it was heaven to be able to eat in a restaurant without worrying about James. He is not a fan of sitting down for meals :)

Christmas Eve Anthony went fishing with his dad and they had a great time! They stayed out all day and caught 5 red fish (but were only allowed to keep 2). Anthony is dying to get back out there soon!

While Anthony was gone, James and I took my mom to check out the dinosaurs at the botanical gardens and find the geocache. The weather was perfect, and I walked right to the geocache! I had researched a little more online and realized that I had been looking in the wrong spot before. Once I got to the right area, it was a cinch!

Here he is, trying to give me a stick he got of the ground so I can put it in the "ash" (trash). He gets very concerned about litter or things he thinks are out of place :)

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At one point, he decided to just sit down and draw in the dirt with his stick. I don't think I have ever seen him do that before:

When we would get to a dinosaur, James would say "whoa!" or "cool!" and then proceed to find something more entertaining to play with. At the triceratops, he found a palm frond on the ground and pushed it around for the rest of our visit. He loved that thing! He cried when I made him leave it. I just think it is so funny that right in front of this HUGE stone dinosaur he would rather play with a stick:

As we were getting in the car to go home, my mom put James down in the passenger seat for a minute so we could put our other stuff in the backseat. Quick as a flash James crawled over to the driver seat so he could play with the steering wheel. When I pulled him away to put him in his car seat, he clung to the wheel like glue, he did not want to let go!

Christmas Eve my brothers made it from Gainesville and we had a great time visiting and playing board games. I love how much we laugh when we all get together! My older brother had to leave real early the next morning to make it home in time for work, but we are glad he got to stay for the time he did.

Christmas morning, I was up waaaaay before James was. I think I got up around 8:30 and finally I went into James room to wake him up around 9:45. Why can't he sleep in like that on a normal day?

After everyone was up, we went into the front room for presents. James had a hard time getting the hang of his stocking...he would get one thing out and then want to play with it and act annoyed when we would want him to keep looking for more. Eventually he got into it :)

For some reason he ended up with three different play microphones. He loves them though!

Anytime I ask Anthony what books James should have (since I can't resist buying him books!) Anthony always says The Poky Little Puppy, since that was one of his favorites growing up. This year he got it!

Another car:

A large car track/set. It is about 50/50 right now between him being really irritated by this toy and loving playing with it. It might need to disappear and come back in a few months...

The grand finale of the morning was his new jeep! He absolutely loved it!

Here is a video of him driving it around. He now has become a pro at pressing the reverse when he gets stuck somewhere and then backing out. Anthony is trying to think of ways to fix the wheels so that they don't get stuck so often in the grass.

Christmas afternoon Anthony's parents and his sister and her family came over for appetizers and desserts. The food was great and we had a blast visiting and opening presents. James caught on to Anthony's parents' names really quickly and he kept asking for "Mimi" and "Papa" all night:

Of course we couldn't leave the dogs out of the fun. They absolutely hated it:

It was a great Christmas, I hope everyone else's was just as wonderful!