The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Where to begin? I've been sitting here for a few minutes trying to decide how to start this blog. This Christmas was probably one of the best we've ever had. Lilly finally understood that Santa was coming and what that meant for her, it was so much fun. It was also the first Christmas ever that Bryan's parents had both of their kids, spouses and grand kids together. But, this Christmas began with sadness and loss for the Traylor family.
Nine days before Christmas Bryan's Granddad, Jack Traylor, lost his hard fought battle with cancer at the age of 88. Bryan made the trip to Kentucky for the memorial services alone, spent four days with his entire extended family reminiscing and mourning, and then returned with his parents, his sister and her family in tow.
The whole fam made the trip here this year since Jack is still too little to travel. We all gathered at our house for a traditional family Christmas complete with dinner, napping, presents and snow.
Lilly opening a gift. She was a little slow at first, but after a little practice she was really tearing into them. Jack lucked out. With Aunt Cammie, Uncle Ed, two cousins, a Grandma and Granddad he rarely had to sleep in his bed. We let Cammie take a nap without making her get in her bed too.

Matthew and Lilly playing in the snow. The layer of ice made snowman building impossible, but with a little help from Matthew Lilly was able to make a snow angel. She didn't weigh enough to break through the ice layer by herself so Matthew had to push on her to break the surface.

Bryan's family headed back to KY on Thursday. The next day was Christmas Eve and we spent the day relaxing. This relaxing led to laziness and laziness led to what will, I hope, become a new Christmas Eve tradition for our family: carry out sushi for dinner.

On Christmas Eve Lilly and I also made some cookies for Santa. She was very excited to leave the cookies and some milk out for Santa and a few carrots for the reindeer. This excitement turned to confusion in the morning when only a few bites of each were left on the plate. The confusion switched back to excitement when she realized she could eat the bites of cookie that were left on the plate. At 9:00 in the morning.

This was the most fun I've had on Christmas morning since I was a kid myself. I think Bryan and I were even more excited that Lilly. After she woke up and asked, "Is Santa here?", she heard Bryan in the kitchen and whispered to me, "I think he's in the kitchen." Bryan had already explained in detail how Santa would come down the chimney, eat the cookies and then leave presents under the tree. He did not, however, explain to her how Santa would leave. After explaining that Santa didn't stick around for breakfast we steered her towards the cookies to point out that they had been eaten. Then we could hardly wait while she remembered on her own that if Santa had eaten the cookies he had probably left some things under the tree. We followed her eagerly into the living room and didn't even take any pictures as she saw everything that had been left. She looked through all of her new things and didn't know what to play with first. Then, while looking through the trunk of dress up dresses she looked up at Bryan and asked, "Is Santa still working on the blue dress?" Oops. When Lilly sat on Santa's lap she told him that she'd like to have a purple dress and a blue dress to play in. The dress up trunk came with a purple dress and several others, along with accessories, tiaras, heels and jewelry. But, the lack of a blue dress did not escape Lilly's notice. Santa fail.

Lilly spending a little time with Jack on one of his Christmas gifts, while wearing one of hers. We spent quite a bit of time on Christmas morning taking Lilly in and out of dress up dresses, but not a blue one.

After spending some time on Christmas day playing with all of Lilly's new things we made our way to my mom and dad's house, along with Wes and Kristy to have dinner.

A rarity: A picture with both me, my mom and Kristy in it. We are usually the ones taking the pictures, but in a rare event Wes got behind the camera and snapped a few. Too bad he didn't tell Kristy we were posing.

The day after Christmas was a great day for sleeping in. But, after the sleeping in was over we met Wes and Kristy at my parents' house for some sledding.

After all the Christmas excitement poor Jack was just worn out.