Christmas 2010

We had a wonderfully mellow Christmas at the Power House, and it was even white (not really white, but white nonetheless)! We woke up Christmas morning with just Sean, me, Lauren, Aunt Arie and Stella and opened presents after we had some Eggs Benedict for breakfast.

Lauren quickly learned how to make an obligatory "surprised" face.

She was a fan of her xylophone stocking stuffer.

Hanging an ornament from Aunt Arie.

Stella was exhausted.

I'm sad to say that I forgot to take photos of our Christmas celebration with The Powers. Sean's mom Alinda, dad Colin, sister Shannon and niece Holly arrived in Kansas City from St. Louis around 4 and we had a big dinner and then opened presents. I think I was too busy running around cooking, but I did get a picture of the prime rib (roast beast) that I made for dinner because it was my first attempt at prime rib and I was really proud of myself.

Christmas this year was lovely. Lauren was more into opening presents, although she did get a little tired of it after awhile. We had great food, great company, and were very thankful to be with family.

Union Hill Christmas Program (and Santa!)

Lauren had her school Christmas program at Union Hill in the middle of December. We have some video, too, which I'll edit and post soon (I hope). As you'll see, Lauren rocked some maracas. As you'll also see, there were some criers (just wait for the video, really all you hear is one kid wailing), but Lauren was cool as a cucumber, as per usual.

The school had a Santa Claus for the kids to visit...Lauren was not a fan. My favorite is the bottom photo: I don't want your candy cane, Santa, you creep me out. It's a pretty fantastic look of disgust.

Lauren Meets Santa

I'm not going to lie, part of me was hoping for the screaming child on Santa's lap photo opportunity. But Lauren was cool as a cucumber, and was pretty into Santa's beard. We waited until the last possible second (ok almost) to take Lauren to visit Santa on Christmas Eve. Luckily she got her order in on time. And no tears. Better luck next year.

Lauren's First Christmas

We had a great first Christmas with Lauren. She was more into it than we thought she would be; of course she didn't care about the presents as much as she did the wrapping, boxes and bows, but still, she was kind of into it. We started our tradition of opening one present on Christmas Eve. Sorry Aunt Jane, it was yours! I know how you hate the Christmas Eve present opening tradition! But maybe the fact that it was Lauren's first present opening experience will make you feel better about it. She loved the bows. And the crinkly wrapping paper.

She also thought the hedgehog ornament was pretty cool.

For Christmas, I gave Sean the best present of all: baby Lauren. Not sure what the facial expressions below mean.

I was feeling motherly and went out and bought stockings at the last minute. Thank you, World Market. One for Sean, one for me, one for Lauren, one for Aunt Arie, and one for Miller.

Our tree was kind of bare ornaments-wise, but I figure that's what baby's first Christmas is all about; you start out with nothing and then build on every year. Luckily my family must know me because we received ornaments from Aunt Jane and Grandma and Grandpa Power. The tree is much less Charlie Brown now.

A soft blocks set from Grandma and Grandpa Power.

Lauren's favorite present: The cardboard box.

Santa brought Lauren an alphabet blocks set with different styles of typography. Santa is so thoughtful to our design scheme.

(Great) Aunt Jane made Lauren a book that told her all about the hedgehog that she knitted and felted for Lauren. It was very, very special, and Lauren seemed to know that Aunt Jane had put a lot of hard work and thought into it.

Below, Sean gets creative with wrapping.

Lauren eats her Christmas breakfast of oatmeal, yogurt and applesauce. Yum.

Check out the snow outside.

For Christmas Eve some of Arie's friends were supposed to join us for a make your own pizza party, but the snowstorm kept them at home. It continued to snow all of Christmas day, and is still snowing. We had our own make your own pizza party and went to sleep early since I, with the worst timing ever, came down with a cold the afternoon of December 23rd.

On Christmas morning we had mimosas with freshly squeezed orange juice (thank you Arie) and opened presents. For Christmas dinner we made filets, which is a tradition I could get into. Hope that everyone's Christmas was as wonderful as ours; Christmas as a mom is so much better than Christmas as a kid. I think that surprised me.

Christmas Program

So today Lauren had her Christmas program at school. What does a 7 month old do in a Christmas program, you might ask? Not a lot, except look amazingly cute. As you can see, Lauren was sitting unattended, so in addition to looking cute she also fell over and hit either the floor or the wall with her head (we didn't see the landing). So besides feeling a little nauseous when I heard the thunk, and the tears of Lauren (I held mine back) afterwards, we had a great time.

The "babies" are in Santa hats (including Lauren), and those are the kids in Lauren's actual room, then the "crawlers" are in the elf costumes, and are in the room next door to Lauren. If you're having a hard time picking Lauren out, she's the one who sneezes. Someone kept getting in her light, but she was a total pro and didn't have a diva meltdown about it. That's our girl.