Christmas Video Log

We had a great, but exhausting Christmas weekend.  If you missed it, you should check out my Christmas Eve and Christmas Day posts.  As a follow-up, I thought I'd post some of the fun videos we took over the weekend.

Ledger loved playing with the empty wrapping paper rolls.  Here are a few videos of our "sword fights"



Ledger opened a remote controlled tractor and he thought it was pretty funny when it moved.  He also really liked when you pressed a certain button and it played music.



Alright, one last video.  Ledger was up pretty late on Christmas night, and he found everything hilarious.  Especially this yelling match between him and Papa Dooda...

Christmas On-The-Go

After an awesome Christmas Eve with the Michel and Vanderbeck families, we drove to Lindsborg and stayed up late playing games with the Hensleys and Perkins'.  We spent the night in Lindsborg and woke up to a big, family Christmas morning.  As usual, Ledger woke up pretty early, so we didn't have to wait too long to open our stockings and presents.  It was really fun to spend Christmas morning with my family.

This is the best family picture with the dogs that we've ever taken!

Uncle Josh showing off his camo hunting gear.

Mom gave Emily and I a scrapbook that has pictures and memories that are nicely organized by year from when we were born to when we were married.  Chris and I enjoyed looking through mine.

Emily and Josh went through her scrapbook too!

After a fun morning, Chris, Ledger, and I returned home to have our own family Christmas.  We were running late, so it was a more rushed than I would have preferred.  But, Ledger opened his presents from Santa -- Mega Blocks and a Mega Blocks dump truck.  Chris and I opened stockings and the lotto ticket in his stocking won him $50!!

A quick shower and clothes change later, we were on-the-go again headed to the Michel household for Christmas lunch.  Grammie always makes an excellent spread with baked chicken and she definitely did not disappoint us this year!  Ledger hitched a ride with Uncle V in a Christmas tote bag.

After a yummy lunch, we packed up again to head to Tracy's house to celebrate with the Peterson family.  Her house was packed with people and food.  Ledger enjoyed playing with Faith's vacuum and his cousins: Edward, Aubrey, Isaac, Annika, and Faith.

For Christmas, everyone contributed one page to Grammie's scrapbook.  It turned out to be a very neat family treasure.  A few days prior to Christmas, Grammie was told that after 6 weeks of chemo and radiation for uterine cancer, her CT scan is completely clear.  What a blessing!

We had to leave the party after about an hour to get Ledger home for a nap.  (Mommy and Daddy napped too.)  After a few hours, we went back to the party to hang out with family.  Chris and Josh quickly disappeared into the basement to play X-Box with Ethan.  Ledger and I watched the family play Wii games --  Let's Dance, Tennis, and Bowling.  It was pretty funny to watch everyone dancing around.  About 7, we headed back to Lindsborg for another evening of games.

We tried to let Ledger stay up a little later than his usual scheduled bedtime of 7:30pm and finally put him to sleep around 8:45pm.  That plan completely backfired when Ledger woke up screaming around 10:30pm and was so overly tired that he couldn't get settled down.  So we packed ourselves up and drove back home.  Three very exhausted Michels finally got ourselves home and to bed just before midnight.  Phew!  What a Christmas, huh?

Christmas Eve

For Christmas Eve this year, we had our Michel family Christmas celebration.  Ledger had another great Christmas and had a mountain of presents to open.  His favorite gift, BY FAR, was a kid version of a vacuum that makes vacuum-like noises.  We made the mistake of letting him open that gift first, so he happily spent most of our family Christmas vacuuming the room and only took a few seconds' break to rip paper off of his next present.  :-)  Daddy got a laptop, which he was very excited for.  His laptop has been out of commission for more than two weeks!  Mommy got a video camera that works underwater and a nice pair of jeans.  Uncle Chris V. got some cowboy boots and aunt Jaime got two different types of vacuum. :)  Grammie scored some beautiful jewelry and Grandpa got a stack of puzzles and gift certificates.  As always, we finished with the Michel family scavenger hunt -- we look forward to it every year!  For the second year, we had our family dinner at Red Lobster.... yum!!

Ledger sings

Lately, Ledger has been singing whenever we get in the car.  His singing is HILARIOUS, and I managed to catch a little bit of it on video for YOU!

Merry Christmas!

An Oklahoma Christmas

This weekend we had a great time in Broken Arrow celebrating Christmas with our Oklahoma family.  Ledger loved Boom-Ma's Christmas tree and especially loved all the presents underneath it.  From the moment we arrived, he wanted to climb-on or rip-open all of the gifts.  What is it about a Santa hat that just screams -- TAKE A PICTURE!!

On Saturday evening, Millie put together a family gathering -- hors d'oeuvres for the adults, and presents for the kids. :)  It was really fun to see all of the kids together.  Ledger worked hard to keep up with Peyton, Carson, and Hayden.  He really loved watching the big boys drive their remote controlled cars around the sun room -- he'd just SQUEAL as the car zoomed past him! :)  We also got some cute photo ops of Ledger and Lilah, who is about a month older than Ledger.

Saturday night, we had family game night with the Powells and Perkins'.  Santa surprised us with a new game... DUCK HUNT LIVE!  You have this little remote controlled duck that flies around the room and someone else has a gun and has to shoot the duck three times for it to fall from the sky.  We had so much fun and laughed and laughed.  In the following video, the duck goes rogue.

Sunday morning was our family Christmas morning.  I love the tradition of opening all of our gifts in our jammies.  Ledger enjoyed digging presents out of his stocking.  He got a kids drill with a construction hat and a kids shovel, both of which were a big hit with our little boy.  Overall, this weekend was great.  Too bad it had to end so soon!

Santa Claus is Coming To Town

This year, Ledger has been VERY wary of Santa Claus.  We've been working with Ledger to expose him to Santa to get him used to the idea of a stranger in a red suit.  This week, we went to our THIRD "Pictures with Santa" session.  The first two sessions were not successful -- we have photos of Ledger sitting on my lap in the near vicinity of Santa trying very hard to escape.  We weren't feeling too confident about getting any workable shots for Christmas this year... but I guess the third time is the charm!!

Tony Guzman, a local photographer, was offering a free 8x10 photo with Santa with a donation of 2 canned items.  We couldn't pass up that deal!  When we got there, Ledger was pretty nervous around Santa.  Tony and Santa were both very patient and willing to give Ledger some time to get used to the situation.  After a few minutes... and a candy cane bribe... Ledger was willing to sit with Santa for pictures!  It was great.  We had a wonderful time and got some awesome pictures!!