Santa Came Early : Part 2

{We did Santa early this year. We travel to see family over the holidays, but we really wanted to do this at home… You can read Part 1 in the previous post…}

Knox is my early riser. He usually gets up around 5 or 6 and wanders downstairs to our room. With this in mind, I had James install the baby gate outside his door Saturday night. (The one I knew he couldn’t open.)

Well guess what… At 5am I heard someone tinkering in the living room. I had James go check and sure enough Knox was in there. PLAYING with his Santa toys. I had a minor freak out then made him stay in our room til the rest of the world was ready to get up. I was curious how he got out of his room…

This is what I found when I went to go look. What a smarty pants!

While Knox was not sleeping in our room, I went ahead and started part of our Christmas morning breakfast. Grits Casserole. Here’s a peek at how healthy it is…

Mmmmm ;) It’s the baked recipe my mom always made. Basically you cook grits on the stove, add butter, cheese, egg, garlic salt, and a little milk, then bake. Turns out SO yummy.

I was adamant on Knox having to wait in our room for a little while. Mainly so Hadley could wake up, but also because I wanted to build up his anticipation so he’d be a little surprised when he saw what Santa brought. (For the second time…)

He was driving James insane so I finally caved and woke Hadley at 6am. I told James we were ready, and as I was walking to the other side of the living room to get pictures of the “entrance” Knox was already barging in!

So I didn’t get any pictures of the excitement. I had my video camera going but as soon as Knox barged in I asked James why he didn’t “control the entrance more” and then he proceeded to make fun of me for being a tad OCD… So I won’t share that clip ;)

He really was so excited though. Even if this was his second time seeing everything…

Hard to say which was his favorite. He was excited about everything - right down to his stocking stuffers!

We (James) had put together the Hometown Heroes playset the night before just because it required a lot of tools, but everything else we opened and assembled Sunday morning. Our Santa is lazy… He doesn’t wrap presents or open boxes ;)

Hadley was so fun to watch. I’m not sure what she thought of it all!

She’s a big fan of the bumper car…

She’s not too sure about the teeter totter yet… But I think it will grow on her :)

James and I laughed so hard because, by far, Hadley was MOST excited about the little Gerber snacks in her stocking…

She took one straight to Daddy to open…

And once she was finished…

She had him open another! Growth spurt???

The Little People set was another big hit. She and Knox played with this for hours…

This is her ROARING. She roars when she plays with animals and makes the motor noise when she plays with cars… Such a funny little girl!

We paused the fun for some breakfast…

We had the grits along with eggs and toast. I wasn’t planning to do a big breakfast so we worked with whatever we had on hand.

The kids spent the rest of the day just playing. Non-stop fun, they were so excited!

Yet another perk to having Santa come early… They wore their jammies ALL day long. We didn’t have to rush out the door to be anywhere. So nice.

Eventually I began sorting things out to go to Knox’s room, the playroom, and the living room toy box. They hung out with me while I arranged Knox’s room with all his new things…

Hadley brushing her teeth…

AND her hair. This girl loves to primp. She’s always hijacking my hair and make-up supplies whenever she can. She’d stand there and brush her hair for and hour if I let her.

Since Knox got a lot of big boy toys this year I set most of them up in his room to keep the small parts away from H as much as possible. It’s turning in to quite the fun little space for him…

   

                   

The rest of the day was just more of this…

And this…

Watching a few Christmas movies…

Santa fun is exhausting. By bedtime we ALL felt like this…

(There are no words for him…)

I’m so glad we continued our little Early Santa tradition this year. It gives us the best of both worlds… Spending holidays with family AND making Christmas memories in our own home. This just works for us in every way. We’ll do it for as many years as we’re able to pull it off :)