My Favorite Christmas Moments

When Johnathan managed to still be relatively happy at the end of 15-hour travel days with few meltdowns - one with no nap at all, and one that he stayed up until 2 am waiting for the plane to take off.


Watching him play ever so gently but with much enthusiasm with the train that ran around Granna and Poppy's Christmas tree.


When he would challenge our "no". Can I touch this ornament? no....what about this one? no...this one?


When he kept waking up every morning saying he was "ready" to "go" again in the "car" as we paraded him from house to house.



When he managed to learn many of the 21 people's (and two dogs) names at Marcie's house.

When he spotted his cousin's new ride-on-train from across the room, and literally pushed everyone and everything out of his way to get to it as his jaw dropped and eyes got big.

When he refused to eat dinner at the kids table with the paper plates but ate ever so carefully in my chair using the good silver.

When I ran out of little bites of dessert for him, he left me and went and found a grandpa who would indulge him.

When Christmas morning took 2 days to open because he refused to open another present until he had thoroughly played with the one he had just opened which included stopping to finger paint in the middle of opening presents.

When he got as excited about opening a new box of crayons as any other new toy he got.

When he kept calling Ben's younger brother "daddy".

Running around and shining a flashlight in everyone's faces saying "cheese", pretending it was his camera (we got the hint that we were taking too many pictures).

When daddy found the sugar cookies and the icing and spent 2 nights artistically icing the cookies.