Christmas morning at home

Before I get too ahead of myself with January organizing + purging fever, I wanted to recap our Christmas(es). We celebrated at home two weeks ago before we left to see family for ten days. These last two Christmases when Jake has been old enough to get excited about gifts have been the best ones I can remember, although I'm not sure we'll ever top last year's train table. Christmas is definitely much more fun as a parent!

^before unwrapping began!

[Soon to come: a video of Jake walking in to see the kitchen, once I work out the kinks to get it uploaded!]

^stocking stuffers (not pictured: 800 count bag of Dum Dums that Deric bought for him!)

This year Jake's big gift was a play kitchen that we started building in August. Deric improvised with what lumber we already had and got the frame together and then it sat untouched all throughout my first trimester, until almost November. So go figure we were putting finishing touches on the kitchen until after midnight the night before. We still want to add a microwave to the top right corner but Jake doesn't know its missing, so there was no rush to finish that part. Maybe by his birthday in May we'll get that up. ;) To go with the kitchen, Jake received a stackable sandwich kit and he's been making us all kinds of strange sandwich concoctions lately. Most of the time though, all the ingredients end up in his little pot and pans as "soup". He's told me multiple times that you have to be careful around the stove since its hot so its good to know he's listening to me when we're in the real kitchen! He's also pretty taken with his little oven mitt and uses it to bring us tomatoes, oranges and what have you.

^"soup" ;)

A video of Jake working on his sandwich slicing skills:

Christmas morning: making sandwiches from Ashley Skinner on Vimeo.

Deric lucked out the day before we celebrated Christmas when he found this fire truck at the thrift store for a whopping $2! It almost stole the show from the kitchen, go figure.

Jake doesn't quite understand yet that after one gift there are usually more, so he's great about playing with each gift as it comes and enjoying it before even noticing other ones. We stretched the morning out as long as we could and I loved spending the morning all together completely uninterrupted and with no need to get other things done that day. It was nice to have some peace and quiet before we started our marathon road trip. ;) More Christmas to come!