Christmas

We have enjoyed a wonderful day with family today celebrating Christmas.  Brayden woke up to find that Santa had come to visit him last night.  He wasn't overly excited this morning...I think he was just in awe of all the new toys!  After opening presents at home, we went to see what Santa brought Madeline, Lydia and Margo and eat breakfast with them.  We all went to my parents house for lunch, followed by more presents.  The kids were all so excited to get their gifts!  Brayden got so many new toys today, he spent the afternoon going from one to the other.  Greg's favorite is a hockey net and sticks that Santa brought....he and Brayden played with that for awhile tonight (of course, Brayden was all decked out in his new Hurricanes jersey from Grammy & Grampa for that)  We were planning to go to Wilmington tomorrow to visit with Catherine, Travis, Caroline and Avery, but our area is suppose to get several inches of snow, so that trip will probably be postponed.  It will be fun to have a snow day....looking forward to see what Brayden thinks of it. 

Christmas Festivities

We have been enjoying the holiday season so far and all of the many events there are.  Greg and I are especially enjoying Brayden this holiday season, as he gets so excited over everything.  We decorated our tree and the house a few weekends ago, and Brayden was more than eager to "help".  For the first week the decorations were up, he loved to play with everything and show anyone who came in the house EVERY decoration.  His favorite is definitely the Christmas tree!  He played with all of the ornaments on the bottom half and rearranged them several times, but I think he is finally done with that...thank goodness!  Now he likes to look at the wrapped presents under the tree, and he knows who each one is for.  He's only tried to open them a few times  : )

We went to the Smithfield Christmas parade this past Thursday night.  It was COLD!!  We bundled ourselves up though and had a great time.  Brayden waved to nearly every person that went by and kept asking for more after a float would go by.  He really enjoyed the clowns and go cart racers alot, but I think his favorite part was seeing his friend Bo go by on his own mom's Smitfield Dance Academy float!  Brayden talked about that for quite a while.

We ate breakfast with Santa at our church yesterday morning.  Greg and I have been talking to Brayden a lot about Santa Claus, but we weren't sure how he would actually react to seeing him in person.  Brayden watched the other kids go up to him for a bit (while clinging onto me).  When I asked him if he wanted to go up and sit in Santa's lap, Brayden ran right up to him and climbed up.  I was so surpised!  You can't tell by these pictures, but he really liked sitting in Santa's lap.  He kept wanting to go up, but every time he did, Brayden would freeze up and not talk, smile, etc.  He must have gone up to him about five different times though before I had to pull him away. 

We have more Christmas festivities to go to this week.  Time is really flying by....Christmas day will be here in no time!