A tale of four Christmases

Friends

Christmas came early in 2009, and it came often. Because we were going to Norway, we arranged for Santa to come to Colorado early (he does that, if you know how to ask). So one fine December morning, we had Christmas at our house.

This was a big year for girly-stuff for Rachel, who scored a dollhouse, a farmhouse, some dolls, cribs, stroller and other random pink things (guess who's writing?). She was thrilled.

Daniel's takeaway was a robot (it dances, it whistles, it has a remote control), a space shuttle and a dinosaur hotwheels track. As he took it all in, he said "Papa - do you want to play Robot-Space-Dinos?"

Lesson for parents - unwrap and assemble toys first. With all of the twisty-ties and other packaging, christmas morning was an exercise in frustrated kids waiting to get to play, and a lot of paper and junk spread around.

Christmas #2 happened a few days later at Grandma Babe's house. She cooked a yummy dinner, and again, there were presents. The kids got a globe and stomp rockets.

Daniel is a master negotiator, who's learned that we won't tolerate him simply snatching his sister's toys away. So if he wants something, he'll work to convince her that some other toy is more fun. "Hey Rachel, is this a cool sword, or what?".

No dummy herself, when she doesn't agree, or doesn't want to share - Rachel will answer: "What!"

Christmas #3 was in Norway, where we got together with Farmor, Grandpa, Aunt Sara, Uncle Michael, Cousins Leo and Jacob, great-grandmother mormor, great-aunt and -uncle Marjan and Benny and Eric's cousins Hannes and Manda. It was quite the Swedish-Norwegian-American christmas feast.

In Norway, Santa comes during the evening after dinner, and will sometimes come in and say a few words to the kids. I guess he must have been on a tight schedule, because he just knocked on the window and left a bag of presents outside.

The Norwegian santa (and family members) brought playmobile toys. So Daniel found himself the owner of a boat and a submarine, while Rachel got a complete vetrinarian setup to go with her barn.

Here's Daniel and Grandpa discussing some of the finer points of playmobile. Or perhaps it's Lego - D also got a lego police helicopter. And it turns out that he's pretty good at following Lego assembly instructions. Sure, he likes to validate every step with an adult, but you can say "Daniel, make it look like this" and he goes and finds the right pieces, puts them in the right place and could (if he wanted to) build complex legos on his own.

And, as if THAT wasn't enough present-madness, when we got home from Norway, there were packages waiting. Aunt Erin and Chloe had come to visit while we were gone, and of course the mailman had done his part too. Daniel is very proud of his new Batman laptop. It has a number of activities/games, and he's gotten into a few of them - some are still beyond his interest, though.

Whew - with all of these new toys, it'll be a long time until anyone gets bored around our house. It's actually a bit overwhelming. Perhaps next year, we can consolidate everything into a single christmas.

Until next time.
ADRE