Christmas Recap

Merry Christmas! We hope you had a great day yesterday with your families and that Santa was good to you and yours. Below are some pictures of our families Christmas morning!

Vanessa

We thought there would be a shock factor when she woke up to see this. You probably can’t tell from this picture but we strategically blocked off the path to her playroom. Her morning routine involves a visit to the potty, diaper change and a bee line to the playroom for breakfast! Yesterday, there was a little detour!

Caroline’s big gift was a dollhouse. A few months ago, I stumbled across an article that said around 18-24 months, parents should buy toys that encourage mimicking (dolls talking to each other, etc.) and so we thought this was a good time to buy a toy that would last a few years. My sweet (and overly generous) Mother In Law purchased the dollhouse and EVERY SINGLE PIECE OF FURNITURE we could ever dream of…even seasonal furniture.

Her other big gift was a counting Kangaroo–I think this is cooler than she does. But she did enjoy stepping on it and hearing him count. And then there was Elmo. Elmo was a big hit. I couldn’t justify spending $60 on the Let’s Rock Elmo, so we settled for poor man’s Elmo–The Rockin’ Shapes and Colors Elmo for $14.99. She’ll never know. Included in her Elmo loot was an Elmo shirt, Elmo books to go with her new LeapFrog Junior Tag (Mommy is pumped about this gift!) and some Elmo stocking stuffers. All in all it was a great day for the Barrys and Caroline seems excited about the new additions to her playroom.

Matt’s favorite gift was the Esquire-Eat Like A Man cookbook I found on Amazon and mine was my new Kendra Scott earrings from Matt! So sweet. We had a great time. I have to give a shout out to my husband who made a delicious beef tenderloin (purchased from Austin Meat House) that made all of our tummies happy! OH and I have to give another shout out to my husband for writing this sweet Christmas note to me from Caroline. Brought tears to my eyes.

It was a great day.

Allison

Months ago I started thinking about what we could get Lincoln for Christmas. The problem is that he’s totally thrilled by the remote control, boxes, and playing pretend by trying to feed mommy and daddy with the non-existent pretend food he’s holding. In addition, I’m super lucky in the fact that my sister saves EVERYTHING. You name the toy and she has it….wait no, I have it. So trying to shop for the kid that has it all is somewhat difficult.

Lincoln ready to make his Christmas morning debut!

So sadly we bought Lincoln VERY little this year. After reading my counter part’s excerpt above I kinda feel like a bad mom! We got Lincoln some neat gifts like gigantic sized Legos, LeapFrog’s Tag Junior (I think it’s cool, but Vanessa might be a tad more excited than me about the toy), books, a Mobigo, etc.

We had to cover Lincoln up with presents just so he wouldn’t crawl away.

I’m glad we did Christmas the way we did and bought the limited gifts we did, because just as I predicted my kid didn’t care one bit about the festivities or his new gifts. And I say “limited” loosely, because some of the gifts named above weren’t from mommy and daddy, LOL! Either way, he was more interested in taking the stick on bows off the wrapped gifts, climbing up the stairs, and then wanted to play with my nieces pink carousel more than open his own gifts. We think he’s starting to “get” it, but we still think next year will be the monumental “Lincoln gets Santa” year.

As for “our” Christmas I’m a little ticked at my husband. He gave me a very specific budget which included family, friends, Lincoln, and each other. He knew what had already been spent total prior to me buying him a gift so I assumed he wasn’t expecting much and I assumed not to expect much in return. Well he spent 3/4 of our total budget that he gave me for everyone (us included) on me alone!!!! I got him 2 shirts. Needless to say he was like “oh is this it for me?”. Wooooops, I guess next year I won’t take our “budget” so literally :). Let’s just say I’ll be sporting my new Tory Burch “I’m a Mommy” flats around town and some! Thanks, hon!