Christmas and Grandma's visit

Grandma Woods came to visit Avery (and us!) for the holidays.  On Christmas Eve we tried to get a head start on all the presents we had to open and figured we should open some that night or else we'd never get through them all the next day!

One of Avery's favorite gifts that night was her stuffed Broccoli guy, who has a face, arms and legs.  She loves to eat broccoli and calls it "boppi", so when Jim saw the toy at Ikea one day he had to get it for her!  She carries it all around, hugs it and loves to put her "boppi" in her chair with her, etc

At first Avery wasn't sure what all the presents were all about, but after the first one or two we opened, she started ripping opening the gifts really fast and then going to get more!

Another one of Avery's favorite gifts from that night was an Elmo book and smart phone that goes along with it!

She also showed her brain power by playing with her counting toy and even trying to slide them across and count one through ten!

Another favorite Ikea gift she liked that night was the vegetable set, she tried to eat the carrots!

The next morning when we woke up, Grandma Woods showed Avery how Santa came, and how he left some cookie crumbs and milk from what we left out for him!



Grandma got a great gift, a silhouette of Avery!

Colleen's cousin Charlene also came over to see Avery open Santa's gifts and to spend the day with us, joining us for breakfast, dinner, etc.

We had so many gifts to open that we first opened Santa's gifts to Avery, then had cinnamon rolls, then opened more gifts to each other, then had omelets, then finally opened the rest of the gifts.  We didnt' seem to finish until about noon!  Kylie was in the holiday mood too, wearing a nice seasonal bandanna 

We also finally got our fireplace going!

This is the first time in 2.5 years of living at our house that we used it.  We finally had a chimney sweep done a few months ago.  Of course, we had to turn the thermostat off overnight to cool the lower level of our house down enough to use it (it was really pleasant this year with most days in December in the 60s and even 70s, and it was probably in the 60s that day, not typical fireplace weather)

Other presents that Avery enjoyed were the wooden train set (Just like her daddy!)

 Her bassinet that she used to put in multiple baby dolls, Elmo, train cars, etc and would say "night night"

She actually had so many gifts she liked that we couldn't show them all here or else it would be too much to go through in one posting.  Thanks to all of our friends and family who gave her gifts, she seemed to enjoy all of them!

That night we all went out to dinner at a Chinese restaurant!  We didn't have time to get to the store before they closed on the 24th, and thought we would do something different this year.  Well, it turns out it was really crowded and everyone else had the same idea!  Apparently Chinese places are the only restaurants open on Christmas day!  Avery got all dressed up though

And when we were getting ready for the photo shoot, she put Boppi in the chair for his holiday photo

Happy New Year's everyone!