It's true, the holidays really are the busiest time of year. This year is no exception, but we have had just such a wonderful time celebrating Ellie's first holiday season.
We started off with a FaceTime phone call to Ellie's Bubbe and Zayde, where Ellie opened her first Hanukkah present and got to see a piece of ancient pottery Jeff's dad and stepmom brought back from Israel and display at Hanukkah time (Ellie started crying around this time so I missed most of that story...).
I was supposed to have a surgery (wound debrisment) to hopefully repair my non-healing c-section incision on December 20th. So, our plans of going to Jeff's mom's house for Christmas were changed and we decided to stay home so I wouldn't have to travel the day after surgery. Fortunately, Jeff's mom was able to come down to help for a few days around my scheduled surgery. So she was able to spend time Christmas time with Ellie, and was a great help to us! Unfortunately, I started running a fever about 16 hours before my surgery and was still feverish when we arrived for pre-op. They decided not to risk the surgery with the fever, and it got postponed. That did allow us time to do more fun things once my fever finally broke on Friday afternoon.
We took Grandma to see St. Augustine's Night of Lights, which is a beautiful display of Christmas lights in St. Augustine's historic district. We also walked around and did some shopping, and stopped into a little Greek/Polish restaurant for perogies for dinner.
Since we knew we would be in town for Christmas Ellie volunteered to be Baby Jesus in the children's Christmas pageant at our new church, St. Andrew's Episcopal Church. So on Christmas Eve she got dressed in her pretty Christmas dress, and off we went to church. Ellie really wanted to add to the realism of the pageant, and she knew that Baby Jesus would have cried (a lot) on the day he was born, so she decided that she would cry while playing him. The poor teenage girl playing Mary tried everything she could to get Ellie to quiet down, but Ellie insisted on making sure everyone in the church could hear her. As soon as she was off the altar (and with a clean diaper) she fell asleep.
Ellie got a lot of really great gifts, including clothes, toys, and books.
Santa brought Ellie her first purse and her first cell phone in her stocking!
Like I said, she enjoyed the tissue paper more than anything else!
We spent the rest of the day relaxing and just enjoying our time together. While we were disappointed that we weren't able to spend the holiday with family like we originally planned on (and that I didn't have my surgery!!!), it was really nice to spend Ellie's first Christmas at home, developing our own traditions for the holiday. I know that Jeff and I had a wonderful Christmas, and we did everything we could to make sure Ellie did too!
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