Christmas Day

Olivia must have been excited for Santa (or "Ta" as she calls him) because she woke up at 5:45 and refused to go back to bed.  So we headed to the living room to see if she was on the "Nice List" -- luckily she made it!

She ran straight to the table to play with the tea set.  It took a good 15 minutes to convince her to stop playing "tea party" and see what other goodies Santa brought her.

We then packed up and headed to the Woodlands to hang out with the Dean's.  Pop-O and Tutu set up this adorable tunnel and tent in the upstairs living room (or what has now been dubbed "Olivia's playroom").  She was not timid at all and raced through the tunnel to see what was waiting for her!

 

This is an awesome video that Tutu shot of Olivia playing in the balls and then seeing Uncle Drew for the first time as he realizes we are in matching pjs - pretty funny!

After some playtime, we got down to business opening presents.  Tutu knows the way to Olivia's heart is through her stomach and accordingly stuffed her stocking with Mum Mums.

She was over-the-moon with all her sweet presents.

It took Olivia a little while to warm up to Uncle Drew since she hasn't seen him in a few months.  A cute moment was after she opened one of her musical gifts, she started dancing.  She then realized Uncle Drew was watching and got embarrassed, so she hid in Pop-O's chest.  As you can see, Pop-O was very distraught about this! ;)

We spent the rest of the day in PJs eating, playing and sleeping.  Olivia was feeling pretty terrible, so we had a laid back dinner at home.

We had a great Christmas & feel so blessed that we got to spend it with our wonderful family!

Christmas Eve

Olivia caught a bad cold (which then turned into a sinus infection) in the days before Christmas.  I absolutely hate for her to be sick.  But, I was so thankful that if she had to be sick, I was on vacation from work and could devote fully "mommy power" to making her well.  We did a lot of cuddling and sleeping in the days leading up to Christmas.

This year we decided to break up Christmas into 2 parts - one part Mehta and one part Dean.  The Mehta clan took Christmas Eve since Aunt Yasmin had to work on Christmas Day and dubbed that day "Mehta Christmas." 

She really enjoyed taking tissue paper out of bags and ripping wrapping paper off boxes, but she didn't understand that the point of doing those things was to find a present.  Once we showed her the goodies, though - she was very excited!  Here she is ready to open some presents (side note - how difficult was it to find a cute short sleeve Christmas dress?!  Ridiculously hard.  But I love the one we ended up with!)

Olivia met the Mehta family dog - Dixie - for the first time.  Until recently, she has been very scared of dogs so I never brought her around Dixie.  But lately she has loved the dogs at my friend's house, so I knew she was ready.  She really liked Dixie and made Mimi jealous beacuse she kept saying Dixie's name, but not Mimi's!

Aunt Naz helping her open her fishbowl

Mimi helping her with the tea set.  This one was a big hit and we've all had a lot of tea this week!

She gave Mimi a big hug after she opened the tea set!

Olivia got Mimi & GrandDad their own personalized grandparent ornament

Aunt Naz and I both got fun new purses and Matt got this adorable hat.

Olivia would periodically take breaks during opening presents to go sit on the stairs.  (She also enjoyed the stairs at PopO and Tutu's house the next day --- she's fearless on them and made me glad we don't have stairs at our house!)

Aunt Yasmin did have to work for a bit on Christmas Eve, but we were all glad she made it over to the house in the afternoon.  Olivia welcomed Aunt Yasmin by making her take her to see Dixie!

When Olivia went down for her nap, the adults ate lunch.  My mom found these "poppers" that had crowns and weird presents in them.  Of course we had a great time with the loot!

After Olivia woke up from her nap, we opened stockings and then played a little more before heading home. 

By the time we got home, poor girl was pretty wiped.  So we set out cookies for Santa....

read The Night Before Christmas (actually we listened to a pre-recorded version that GrandDad made for us!)

 Opened her Christmas Eve present

 

 

And then she went straight to bed.  Hopefully visions of sugarplums danced in her head!