Saturday, December 28, 2013

Christmas Eve-Gifts

After getting home from our excursion, Olivia wasn't feeling well.  She was complaining of a stomach ache, which never happens.  She was whiny, clingy, and pretty uncomfortable.  Our afternoon activity of building a gingerbread house got postponed.

Luckily, sometime after dinner things got better (I'll spare you the details!).  We decided to go ahead and let her open her gifts from us and the few we had from my mom.  Since she sleeps in most mornings, we were concerned that we wouldn't have enough time to eat, open gifts, get ready and get to Michael's grandma's house in time for lunch.  Even though Olivia knows who Santa is, she doesn't quite yet understand that he is suppose to bring her gifts, so it didn't matter much that we were doing it the night before.  In fact, I'm not sure she even knew Christmas involved gifts until I put some under the tree a few days ago!


We really didn't go overboard in the gift department this year.  My original plan was to get her some sort of dress up wardrobe/shelf and then have her grandma help fill it up.  But then I realized that A) she doesn't dress or undress herself yet, and B) she doesn't really even know what a princess is (even though her dress up wouldn't be all princess stuff--but you know what I mean).  That being said, I think I'm going to save that idea for her birthday when she's a little older and can get more use out of the stuff. So we just picked her up little things here and there.  She just got an entire new bedroom, which she is pretty happy about, so I'm calling that part of her gift. :)

 
Unfortunately most of what she got from my mom were things she already has, but she enjoyed ripping into the packages nonetheless.

She was very excited about this Nemo coloring/sticker book.

One of our traditions is to give a Disney/Pixar movie to grow her collection. This year we went with Tangled.  She's watched half of it so far.  I think she likes it?!

She kept wanting help opening each gift.  We'd start it for her, but make her do the rest.  She'd squeal "What is it?!" every single time!!

She got a book about being a big sister!

We get her an ornament every year, so that when she moves out she will have her own collection to start with.  This year I went with an Old World ornament.  It's a Santa, which I thought was fitting.  She has been talking about Christmas for MONTHS and has been into all of the decorations and symbols.

Another accidental tradition that we have going is to get her a snow globe each year.  I picked one up her first year on clearance after Christmas.  It was a baby's first Christmas one with the date.  So last year I got her one.  I was going to stop the tradition this year, but I found one on sale that was cute and got it.  I'm not sure we'll keep this tradition up though.  We already do pajamas, a movie, and a nice ornament each year.  We don't want her entire Christmas budget to be spent on "traditions", and since we will have another little one getting gifts next year...

She got a Laurie Berkner DVD.  After taking a class at the library, she fell in love with the My Energy song.  We got the DVD with that song on it.  It's more of a music video type than an actual movie.

She got Candyland

and a toy broom set that she has already used to sweep up the carpet with :)

And her favorite of the night... a cat!

It's one of those motion sensor ones.  It came with a toy and she was trying to learn how to make it pounce.

She went to bed a pretty happy girl! :)

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