He ate the cookies!

Nolan got up on Christmas Eve morning, walked past the tree with the new presents under it and went in to the kitchen to request his typical breakfast of oatmeal with raisins. I asked him to turn on the light in the kitchen, and that's when he saw the empty plate with cookie crumbs and the empty glass of milk. "He ate all the cookies and drank the milk!" He was so excited to realize that Santa had stopped at our house. He loved the note Santa left for him, too. Christmas has always been one of my favorite holidays, but seeing his reaction to everything just makes it better! After breakfast he asked about the socks under the tree - the stockings. He and Kale sat for a nice picture before starting to open their gifts. Santa brought them each books, play doh and markers, and a pillow pet - Lightening McQueen for Nolan and Thomas the Train for Kale. We asked Santa to visit early this year because we wanted to be in St. Cloud by lunch time. The next few days were a whirlwind of presents, church, lots of relatives, more food than we could eat, and lots of laughs and visiting. All the kids had so much fun at our first Christmas at the new house. There is so much more room for them to run around, places for them to hide, and rooms for us all to sleep! The adults had fun, too. The best gift prize went to Adam from my parent's this year - a brand new acoustic guitar. I'm not sure who was more excited - Adam or Eric! Santa made a surprise visit to the Garceau family get together. Overall he was a big hit! The weather finally cooperated, too, after 2 years of lots of snow and ice. We really did have a brown Christmas - it got up to 48 degrees on the day after Christmas! We intended to drive home right after lunch on Monday, but the kids were so overtired from all the excitement and not quite sleeping all the way through the night that we decided to let them nap there. Three and a half hours later we were packed up and in the car, on our way home.


Over the next week we were busy. We attended Adam's aunt Audrey's funeral. While it was nice to see all the relatives, it was sad to do it in that setting. On Friday I suprised Adam by coming home from work early. I gave him an hour to get ready and pack an overnight bag. I should realize that I can't tell Nolan things anymore and expect him to keep it a secret. As soon as we walked in to daycare to pick up the kids Nolan said to Adam, "We're going to grandma and grandpa's house!". That was clue number one. Adam didn't know until we got on the road which grandparent's house we were going to. After a quick stop to pick up another surprise we were back on the road again to St. Cloud. We dropped off the kids at my parent's house and off we went to celebrate our 5 year anniversary. After checking in to the same hotel suite that we stayed in for our wedding we went for drinks at the Martini Lounge at the Red Carpet, where we had our groom's dinner exactly 5 years ago on December 30th. We followed that up with dinner at Mexican Village. We were so full from all of that, that we didn't get to enjoy the cake I ordered for us - a small replica of our wedding cake (mock angel food cake with raspberry filling). After picking up the kids Saturday morning we dropped the car off at the Kia dealership for an oil change. It was a little weird how close the weather was to our wedding - no snow all winter until the day before and the day of! We walked across the street, through the snow, to have lunch at Space Aliens. It didn't start off well. Nolan was melting down, which actually was fine, because that restaurant is so loud it didn't bother anyone! Luckily Nolan turned himself around and we had an enjoyable anniversary meal with the kids. Later that night we headed over to our friend's house to celebrate New Year's Eve. They surprised us with a slide show of our wedding pictures and a special toast. We were a few minutes late getting home for our babysitter because the roads weren't very good.


Since then we've put away both the inside and outside Christmas decorations (unseasonably warm weather helped with that). Nolan asked for a few days where the tree, star, Frosty and Santa were, but he seems to be over it. Hopefully he'll have the same excitement next year, and that he passes it along to his little brother!