Christmas Eve we went to the children's service at our church and then went home and waited for members of Paul's side of the family to arrive after a later service at their church. Once everyone arrived, we ate and hang out and had a good time. I don't think Paul or I saw much of Rudy once everyone arrived because as long as he had either his cousin Laura or his cousin Neil to play with him, he didn't need anyone else!
After w ate we moved on to presents. Rudy is really the only person that gets presents. Here he is opening his scooter from Aunt Leslie, Uncle Tom and the kids.
From Grandmom he got a Tag Reader and a number of books. One of the books was a dinosaur book, so he was sold immediately. You can see the concentration on his face.
He sat this way for pretty much the entire time the adults exchanged gifts (we do a Yankee Grab Bag- or whatever you may call it).
Here is Aunt Pat stealing a bottle of wine from her son.
Uncle Tom showing off the cool Santa outfit he chose.
Rudy and Laura. Once I took this picture, Rudy took control of the camera and decided which pictures would be taken next - all of them involved him, Neil, and Laura in some combination.
Everyone left around 10:30 and Rudy went to bed. We were lucky - he slept until after 7 on Christmas morning.
Checking out his stocking first.
Fantasia!
Candy!!!
A Spiderman toothbrush that lights up!
More candy!
His own pair of binoculars for when we go hiking.
On Christmas Eve he had also gotten two games - Trouble, which he played, and another that had a lot of pieces and we told him we would open the next day. Once he looked at his stocking, he didn't want to open his presents, he wanted to play the game, saying "You said in the morning I could open it." So we played this game first.
Then he had a piece of candy coal from my stocking (apparently Rudy and Paul plotted with Santa to give me this!).
Then Paul opened his present - a Beatles poster. Rudy gave Paul a hint about this the other day saying it was "Beatley". I'm so glad he only knew about it a few days before Christmas because I'm not sure how long he could have kept it a secret!
And finally on to the other presents- more games
A Batman Leapster game.
He got more books for his Tag Reader.
He played with his Batman game curled up with me ...
...looking very serious!
Grandpa gave over for breakfast and Rudy again demonstrated his Tag Reader.
Knowing that we were supposed to get snow the next day, late afternoon I suggested Rudy take his scooter outside for a while since he probably wouldn't get a chance for a few days. Of course, we didn't realize it would take us almost an hour to put it together! (And this was after Paul and I congratulated ourselves on Christmas Eve for not having anything to put together!)
Once we finally got it together, Rudy took a brief ride down our street. He like it but will take a little more time to totally get comfortable on it!
Our nicely decorated house - pre-snow!
We ended Christmas Day with a tradition we started last year - Chinese food with my dad. Rudy enjoyed slurping the noodles out of his soup!
Today, the day after Christmas, was supposed to be another Christmas celebration with my brothers and their families, but it has been snowing since last night and we are anticipating over a foot of snow, so we postponed that celebration until the end of the week.
