The first night we were in McLean, Santa came by on a firetruck!
I'm not sure why Santa is in the firetruck either, bud. And yes, there is a platypus beanie baby in Elliot's hood.
Ho Ho Ho!
Elliot and Grumpa are still best buds
We were really lucky to have our old neighbor Mariko stay with us in between her adventures to NYC and Cancun. Her dad works for the Japanese foreign service, and she lived across the street from us in Elementary school. She is doing a year abroad in Boston and took some time during the winter break to hang out with us. She fits in super well with the family and is a cut throat Bohnanza player.
Mariko and Breezy
Christmas eve was sadly undocumented in pictures, but there were lots of random video clips incorporated into the video that Breezy made that I'll put at the end of the post. Mom and Aunt Trisha spent several hours scrambling around to various grocery stores and CVS's trying to get last minute dinner ingredients and the picture book for Grammie and Papa that I accidentally ordered for pickup at the wrong store. Sorry about that one.
We finally settled down to Christmas Eve Fondue, which is my favorite holiday tradition and Aaron's least favorite. I gave Elliot some marshmallow, which he got all over his hands. He thought it was hilarious to put his sticky marshmallow hands on his ears and pull them off again over and over. His cuteness was appropriately praised by all present.
Near the end of dinner, Mariko mentioned something about shrimp and everyone flipped out thinking that there was secret shrimp to be eaten somewhere. We spent the rest of the break joking about Mariko's shrimp stash.
Mom was eager to let us help wrap all the presents, but we had to persuade her that it was ok for us to carry all the presents upstairs and put them under the tree. I assured her that we would be able to maintain appropriate levels of Christmas Magic.
Christmas morning
Christmas morning used to be a race to see who could wake up the earliest. This year, we won hands down thanks to Elliot. The night owls (everyone but us and Dad) eventually trickled downstairs. We all gathered in the living room and put Elliot on the floor. He immediately darted to the extremely interesting present pile. He had a great time pulling tissue paper out of all the bags, but didn't quite grasp the concept of opening wrapping paper.
Climbing Mt. Presentpile
Uncle Clint was enthusiastic about instilling a love of amphibians and insects in Elliot
Most of the Christmas Crew. Mariko, Clint, and I were on the other couch and Elliot was off wreaking havoc somewhere.
The traditional pull-aparts for Christmas breakfast.
That afternoon we got to skype Max in Salt Lake. It felt like a board room meeting- we were all sitting on a table with him on the laptop at the end. He has become such a great missionary and is loving it. Max mailed us all Christmas cards with classic absurd illustrations and references to weird Old Testament scriptures. Dad got the one about the kids that get mauled by a bear after they make fun of Elijah for being bald- so appropriate!
The rest of the day was dedicated to prepping the Christmas Feast. We had an exceedingly fancy beef wellington as the main dish with lots of delectable sides and deserts provided by Bret & Shannon (my cousin who now lives in Chantilly).
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