December Updates...Christmas

We stayed in St. Louis this year for Christmas. One, it was my family's turn for Christmas and two, we weren't allowed to travel which meant no trip to Oklahoma-BOO!!! We still had an awesome break together. It was special because Joe had a Christmas break, too. It will be the last time for a long time that we actually got to hang out and do "nothing" together. I think it was really good for Nathan because he got to have lots of time with both Joe and me before the baby arrives. We all got up together each day (with the exception of a couple of mornings while Nathan was sick and Joe and I took turns in the morning) and spent the day getting ready for "brother." Literally, we spent about 8 hours a day working on getting things together...I'll elaborate on that in a different post...back to Christmas.

Christmas Eve we woke up to SNOW! It snowed all day and we enjoyed staying inside and spending the day together. At around 4:00 we went to my parents' house to spend time with them and for dinner. The original plan was to go to the Christmas Eve service at their church, however with the snow my dad was nervous about the parking lot at church being difficult to get out of since it is on a hill and he didn't want me to fall and have Baby Keillor before Christmas...so we stayed at their house and enjoyed being together. It was great! My mom made potato soup (something my grandma used to do every year) and we had Bread Co. bread and salad. It was a very yummy dinner! (P.S. I love being pregnant over the holidays-it's a great excuse to enjoy EVERY rich food there is to eat!!)

Christmas morning Nathan woke up and we all went in to see what Santa left. Nathan was SO excited to see the presents. You will notice I really have no pictures of him looking at the camera because the second he saw presents, he would run and just start tearing into them. He still didn't care what was in them, he would just tear the paper off (every last shred...couldn't leave ANY behind!) and then move on to the next gift without even looking at it to see what was inside the paper.

Seeing the tree for the first time
Opening his first gift from Santa...notice it is still dark outside!!!
His gifts from Santa

After we opened presents, I made breakfast. We started the tradition on Nathan's first Christmas to make breakfast and listen to Christmas music while we eat. I made biscuits, sausage, and eggs. After we ate, we watched a couple of Nathan's shows (Mickey Mouse Clubhouse...the Christmas editions) and then went to my parents' house for lunch. We got there around 10:30 or so and Nathan HAD to immediately open gifts...we usually wait until after lunch, but I don't think there would have been anything for anyone to open because Nathan would have been in the family room opening them for everyone! For lunch my mom fixed turkey, ham, potato casserole, salad, rolls, and other things I'm sure I'm leaving out. It was SO SO yummy!!

In front of the Christmas tree at my parents'...he did so great! He even let us take pictures before we started opening presents. I know that had to be torture!
Opening his gifts...the funny thing is if you look in most of these pictures, the gifts are missing bows. As soon as we got to my parents' house and he saw the gifts in front of the tree, he took a run for it and starting ripping all of the bows off of all of them. It was pretty funny! Nathan enjoyed opening his gifts and then...
he helped
everyone else
open
their gifts! It was so fun! (Joe was protected by the coffee table so Nathan didn't help him quite as much, thus no picture! :))
And for the first time in a long time, my parents had a fire going so of course Nathan was SO curious about that. He was allowed to sit in his rocking chair and look at it with Daddy, but not go any closer. He did a pretty good job of following the rules. Lucky for us, he isn't big on "hot' things, so he knew to stay away.
35 1/2 weeks pregnant with Baby Keillor #2!

After lunch Nathan went down for a much needed nap and we all watched movies. We started out with a not-so-great one and turned it off after about 45 minutes. Then we watched the second half of the movie Town. We watched it on Christmas Eve with my dad, but my mom was playing with Nathan so she didn't get to see it with us. After we left on Christmas Eve, she and my dad stayed up and watched the first half, so we watched the second half on Christmas Day with her. We really liked that movie! We also watch Christmas with The Kranks, another tradition that we started last year.

After Nathan's nap, we spent the afternoon hanging out with my parents, enjoying the White Christmas! It was such a beautiful day and I can't imagine a better way to spend our last Christmas as a family of three than waking up in our own house and going to bed in our own house!! :)