The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

I can't believe how enjoyable it is to witness Christmas through the eyes of a child. Isaac's first Christmas home he was too little and had just had surgery to correct his cleft palate. He really wasn't in to Christmas, still adjusting to life with a family, it was probably a bit overwhelming for him. Last year he enjoyed Christmas but didn't really get into it before hand, he just didn't "get it." But this year, he had an idea of Christmas, and anticipated it with such excitement and enthusiasm! It is truly a blessing to witness such events through the eyes of a child!

We started our family celebration with the tree decoration on the 6th. I wish that I had gotten a picture of Isaac building the tree, but I just didn't think of it. I can't believe it, I think we have a future engineer on our hands. I showed him what to do and he put in at least 25 of the 30 limbs. He didn't want help and thought it was a blast to build the "Christmas tree puzzle."

When we finished he wanted to do it again, but settled for helping put the ornaments on the tree.

This year also marked our first visit to Santa Clause and Santa Cow. We were surprised to see Santa at EPCOT when we went Thanksgiving weekend and Santa Cow came to our favorite restaurant, Chick-fil-A. Isaac was perhaps even more excited to meet Santa Cow than Santa Clause!

We celebrated Christmas with the Stopyra family a week early and Isaac was totally thrilled with the presents he received. Auntie Marissa and his cousins picked some wonderful gifts and we now have some Thomas the Train books to go with our trains and movies. Isaac loves his new books! I had never even thought to look for Thomas books.

To keep up with our love of trains and because I was painting a special mural for Aryn, I decided to paint a Thomas on Isaac's wall. He loves it! My niece is helping show off our hard work. She is quite the artist and was a real help when we painted. Now Isaac wants another choo-choo so we may paint James or Percy coming in towards Thomas on the right. I have to finish Aryn's room first and then we can talk one more choo-choo.

My best friend Wendy had some cool trees painted in her room when we were little girls. They were in the corner with a hammock and I always thought they were cool.

Originally I was going to do the same thing, but then I decided on one tree and went a little crazy. We still have some work to do, so I'll be posting the finished product later in the week. We painted little hearts the same pink as Aryn's name that we'll place on the tree like little apples. We're also adding flowers at the baseboards. It's been a real blast to paint for the kids and not nearly as difficult as I thought it would be.

Isaac even got to help sponge on some of the leaves. He is so excited to help out and I think he is going to be a wonderful brother!

And of course, my awesome assistant!!

Isaac loves opening presents. He doesn't care if they are for him or not, so when he wasn't opening one of his own he was helping other people open their presents. Lucky for Isaac most people were accommodating and allowed him to help. Next year may be a little tricky if Aryn wants to help people open presents too. I need to make a smilebox to show his excitement opening presents. It was so much fun!

We leave in 18 days!! WOW!!! I can't believe it. I'll work on another post tonight. I have a beautiful picture of Aryn Rachel that we just received, so stay tuned!!