Christmas in Virginia

Christmas morning we got Timmy up to open a few gifts at our house before heading out to spend the day with Tim's family. The first gift Timmy opened was a wooden train puzzle and he was so excited about it that we couldn't get him to open anything else! Tim and I opened our gifts while he played and then we headed out to his mom's house.

Elena and Al had a nice breakfast for everyone and we visited for a while. Timmy was more interested in helping Becky open her presents then opening his own! Chris is infamous for believing that whatever is shown on the box his present is in, is his gift. We definitely had him believing that we got him a snuggie this year. He was much happier when he saw the custom redskins jersey inside!

Our next stop was Tim's dad's house and another round of gifts. Everyone got us such nice presents and seemed to like the gifts we passed out as well. We sat around relaxing the rest of the day and had a delicious Christmas dinner with everyone.

When we finally got home Timmy had a chance to open some more of his gifts and actually get to play with them. His geotrax are awesome! He actually figured out how to work them before we did!

The morning of the 26th we went out to Tim's Uncle's house and got to see the extended Jones family for a while and Timmy got to play with his cousin Brandi. 

Then it was back to Elena's for the Shillingburg family Christmas party. We played another round of White Elephant Gift Exchange and then the kids all enjoyed one of Timmy's Christmas presents, a moonbounce! They had so much fun in it, it was so cute!

Christmas in Ohio

We had a whirlwind Christmas this year! We drove to Ohio the afternoon of the 22nd and spent the 23rd with my mom's family and the 24th with my dad's family before driving home that evening. On the 23rd we met my cousins for a photo-op and then had a nice lunch with all of them. We then tried unsuccessfully for a few hours to get Timmy to take a nap before meeting up with everyone at my Uncle Ron's church to help with a dinner for the homeless people in his community. Timmy's mood kept us from participating, but we got to see the church and then went back to Ron's to let Timmy settle down and go to sleep before my cousins, mom, and aunt met us to play a few rounds of Apples to Apples, a great game we just discovered!

On the 24th we took an unintentional tour of Akron while running some errands and then visited at my Grandma's for a while before going to Dale and Paula's to open the first round of presents! Timmy was very meticulous about getting every piece of wrapping paper off of the boxes before really taking a look at the toys inside. Tim got me an amazing new camera, a Canon Digital SLR, so I have over 200 pictures to choose from to go with this post!

My favorite part of Christmas every year is the Machak Family Reunion on Christmas Eve and this year was especially nice because our family has a new generation growing up and it was fun to see the kids playing together. Connor and Chloe are 4 year old twins and Jayce is a few weeks older then Timmy. I always enjoy getting to visit with all of my distant cousins as well.

Another highlight was when some of my Dad's cousins decided to give the new father's some useful gifts, so Tim and Chris were decked out with and displayed a tool belt full of diapers, trash bags, face masks, and a custom designed paper plate shield to use while changing their little boys.

Timmy was still unwilling to sit on Santa's lap, even though he was a bit more familiar looking... but he had no problem accepting presents from him and even gave him a kiss!

And that was just the first half of our Christmas!

18 Months Old!!!

Timmy is now a year and a half old, I can't believe it! We recently watched some of our videos from the beach, when he was 13 months old, and it really hit me how much he has changed in the last few months. It's a little bit every day so it can really sneak up on you! For Timmy's 18 month birthday he helped Grandpa with a "Fix-it" job for the first time, and helped install new racks in their dishwasher.

The week of Timmy's birthday we also went to visit Santa, got most of our presents under the tree, and got to play in a LOT of snow!

The wait for Santa was actually more enjoyable then the actual visit. The theme at our mall is "Polar Express" and you walk through a train engine where you can pull levers and toot whistles which Timmy enjoyed and then you walk through a snow globe that has snow falling inside of it. Santa himself did not appear to be scary until he was actually holding Timmy. Unfortunately the camera-man did not take the crying picture, and the picture he did take once Tim and I sat down with him is not going to be shared!

The presents under the tree drove poor Timmy crazy! He wanted to open them so badly! He would sneak into the corner and stare at us to see if we were going to catch him before ever so slowly and quietly starting to pick at the corner of the presents! He did have fun helping Tim put the bows on them... but later he took a few back off to play with!

The snow storm we got was a record for December in Virginia. We easily had 18" and because of the wind had some spots with as much as 2' and after the plows... we were probably pushing 3' in some places! Timmy loves being outside and was very interested in the snow, but not so much in touching it, so we didn't play outside for long.