Christmas Stories

To start off the season, we got an artificial tree.  Yuck to the artificial, but much better than no tree at all!  Curtis was so excited to put up the tree that he actually got most of it out of the box and put it together.  Then he made several ornaments out of pipe cleaners, feathers, cardboard, etc. and put them on the tree, since I wasn't ready to decorate yet.  When I was finally ready to put the ornaments on, he helped me, grouping them all together on the lower branches.  I couldn't get them unwrapped fast enough!

During the season, Curtis was also very into gingerbread men.  They made a decoration at school, and he kept running around the house talking about "Gingy."

Both boys prepared for the Sunday School Christmas program, and Curtis also had a preschool program.  They sang their songs repeatedly, and of course made up alternate words.  "Mary Rode a Donkey" was the Sunday School song.  It most often gets changed to "Mary Rode a Cow," but other words appear in there too.  For the preschool program the song was "The Friendly Beasts," and Curtis likes to change the words to that song too.

Carl really enjoyed the songs and of course the videos of the season.  Rudolph was his favorite, and he worked very hard to learn most of the words.  He was a cute accomplice in the word-changing of the other songs.

Both boys, but Carl especially, liked looking at the Toys R Us ads that came in the mail.  Carl would pore over it for extended periods of time, squealing each time he saw Lightning McQueen, Buzz, Woody, or any of his other favorite characters.  He called it "Toys fo' us" and would fight with Curtis over it.  As it got closer to Christmas, Carl started pointing at several items in a row, saying, "Santa Claus gonna bring me this, and this, and this, and this!"  He also picked out gifts for everyone else.  Santa was going to bring me a "movie Cars video."

On Christmas morning, Curtis tore through his pile of gifts quickly, and by the end of the morning, Carl had also figured out how to open one gift after another without stopping to play.

Curtis' favorite gift was his Lego castle from Aunt Lori, and Carl's was his Handy Manny play set from Mommy/Daddy/Santa.