Christmas Morning

Christmas morning dawned, well, relatively late for the Ryerson family. Although I was prepared for an early morning wakeup call, (mentally and physically - I actually woke up at 5:30 and laid there half awake for an hour and a half waiting for Nate to come in) both boys slept until 7.

We actually heard Nate get up and go to the bathroom - but he didn't come to get us. I wasn't sure what he was doing, and I thought maybe we had been hearing things. Then Nile started to cry. Tom got up to check on him and I followed behind. Then I see Nate's head poke out of his doorway. After telling him it was okay to come out - he came to me, gave me a big hug, and the first words out of his mouth were: "Merry Christmas, Mommy!" Not "What did Santa bring?" or "Can we open presents?" - I about melted!

It turned out Nile was hungry. When Nile is hungry, watch out! He becomes a cranky whiny kid-monster. Really. He didn't want to have anything to do with presents.

So, while Nate checked out the huge talking Optimus Prime Transformer that he found under the tree, Tom and Nile cooked breakfast.




Then we ate a nice peaceful breakfast, which was great - I love it when we can take our time on Christmas morning and really enjoy it. After breakfast we opened presents. I could share a hundred pictures of the boys opening all their gifts, but I just picked a few highlights.

The boys got Fatheads for their walls. If you don't know what a Fathead is, it's basically a life-size (or larger) sticker that you can put on the wall. They are removable and movable - Nate got Batman and Nile got some huge sports balls (baskeball, soccer ball, etc).


Nile got a Leapfrog game.


Nate got two new Mr. Men books - Mr. Christmas and Mr. Snow - and had to read them right away.


The gift that has gotten the most use by Nile so far is his $2 Play-Doh stocking stuffer.


After our morning Christmas at home, we headed up to the northern Chicago suburbs for Christmas with Tom's side of the family. We stayed overnight in a hotel, which the boys loved, opened more presents (another Transformer for Nate!) and drove home in a blizzard the day after Christmas. We had a great time, the boys were on their best behavior, and it made this Christmas a really wonderful one.

Nate and Wii Golf

My parents got a Wii for Christmas.

It's amazing how intuitively kids "get" technology. I'm sure he will be teaching me how to play next.

Christmas Eve

As is becoming our tradition, we celebrated Christmas with the Fairbanks family on Christmas Eve.

The boys enjoyed cooking cornbread with Grandma.


Then they patiently waited for Becky and Josh to come over before opening presents. Nate and Nile helped read tags and hand out gifts.


One of Nile's favorite gifts is the "GloWriter" from Becky.


Nate got Twister - but we haven't played it yet. Nile got the "Cootie" game - honestly I have no idea how to play it. I have a feeling both of these will produce interesting blog posts.


Nile also finally got his own tools - so now Nate won't be mad when Nile wants to play with his!


Nate got tons of Lego toys - and has played with them every day since.


The biggest gift of the evening was the Wii for my mom and dad. I'll post a video of that on another blog post.

Gingerbread House

Today the boys and I continued our annual tradition of decorating a gingerbread house for Christmas. (I guess I haven't shared our photos from prior years.) This was Nile's first time helping out. It was a little different this year because I had to make the frosting and find the candy to decorate, since we didn't have a full kit. (Believe it or not this is a Halloween gingerbread house kit!) We had a lot of fun. And I think we only chased down about 100 of these little "bb" sized candies as they rolled over the floor.



In all fairness, I took photos of both boys' sides. Here is Nile's roof:


And here is Nate's roof:

Three Days Until Christmas!

I know I've been negligent on blogging. I have cute videos and
pictures from Nate's Christmas program to share. I promise to work on
this later today if I get a quiet hour!

Nate has been counting down the days to Christmas using this calendar.
He was excited to see this morning that we were down to three days left.

2009 Preschool Christmas Program

The annual preschool Christmas program at First Lutheran was a lot of fun, as usual. Due to a nasty bout of stomach flu, neither Tom or Nile was able to go. But luckily, Nate had already had the bug (see here) and I had yet to get it.

The program was full of the usual elements: singing, dancing, and crying. I think I've managed to have them all on this video - it's rather long but I think it was the one that best captured Nate's fine dancing skills. The crying is someone's younger brother who apparently didn't enjoy the preschooler's rendition of "Jingle Bells" as much as we parents did. (and no, it wasn't Nile - he was at home, sick, remember?)



After the program the kids all got a special gift from their teachers. Nate was beside himself with excitement over the small stuffed penguin. He promptly named it "Pen" and said it could be the "aunt" to Pete, his larger penguin at home. Later he decided that it really was Pete's son.



And then, after patiently waiting (in the photo above you see that he is sitting by Santa's chair. He didn't move from that spot until Santa asked him to come up), it was his turn to talk to the man.

He told "Santa" that he wants a Transformer for Christmas. Apparently Santa didn't know what a Transformer is (come on Santa, this is 2009!) so Nate had to explain that a Transformer is a robot.

I am still amazed that the kid who has to have me explain the details of everything (note) accepts Santa. Flying reindeer, presents for every child in the whole world, magic elves: this is all accepted without question. Oh, well.

Tummy Trouble

Last night Nate was up twice, at 3:30 and 4:45, which is really unusual for him. But the second time, he was up because he was sick. The poor kid hates to throw up (not that anyone likes to...).

This morning he got up with Tom and was watching TV when I came out. I told him that we would take it easy at breakfast to see how his stomach would handle food. His response?

"My tummy is handling shows just fine!"

Unfortunately, we didn't quite make it through breakfast. So it looks like it will be a lazy day at home for the family today. We are set up on the couch with blanket, stuffed friend, and bucket.

Of course, Nile has to be treated the same way too, even if he is not sick ;)

Snow Ice Cream

I had promised the boys that they would get to make snow ice cream on the first big snowfall of the year. So - when we got to have a snow day they were really excited to do it!

It's basically an egg, milk, sugar, and vanilla. And mix in a bunch of snow. They really enjoyed it.

First Snow 2009

What kind of mom would I be if I didn't let these two out in the first snow of the year? (Well, I'm not really sure, but there would have been mutiny in our house...)

Shoveling the driveway. They were surprisingly helpful.


Eating snow.


Making a snow angel.


Action shots of snowball-throwing.


We are anxiously waiting the "real" snow that is to come on Wednesday. I have been told that it will be full of snowball fights and snowman-making. Oh, and lots of hot cocoa has been requested.

Christmas Cheer

Feeling a bit like we were really late getting our decorations up this year (what is it this year with everyone being done Thanksgiving weekend???), this last weekend we decided to decorate the house for the holidays.

On Friday the boys and I got started, with the stockings, some smaller decorations, the nativity, and this little tree in the office.

Nile helped with the lights.


The boys with the finished "little tree."


Then on Saturday, Tom got out the tree and Nate helped us decorate it. Nile for some reason just wanted to walk around with his guitar, so he was our "supervisor" for the morning.


Nate was so full of the holiday spirit he wanted to record a special message for everyone.