Christmas Day!
Santa Came!
Discovering the stockings
In true Zane style (and Zora follows his lead on this), he explores each thing before moving on to the next thing. It is really nice that they savor each gift, but means there is no frenzied gift unwrapping, and it takes him a good hour to go through his stocking alone, longer if we didn’t encourage him to return to the stocking. The main gifts take about a half hour in between each gift most of the time.
Here is Zane enjoying the sparkly spinny thing at the top of his stocking. One of those toys that seems were made for autistic people.
The stockings disasembled
Grandma, Grandpa and Steve arrive and we pull out all of the snacks. Since it takes the kids so long to open things, we decide not to have the meal sitting around the table, but just enjoy the snacks until the Six Cheese Crabmeat Lasagna is ready and eat at our leisure while watching the merryment.
The gifts from Grandma and Grandpa. Beautiful musical snow globes. The both loved them, and Zane put his up on the TV stand and stopped to look at it througout the afternoon. They both play “You are my Sunshine”, a song my mom always sang to me, and I sing to them. Perfect.
The gift that made Zora clap with happiness, a Mustang from Uncle Steve.
Of course, it takes a mechanical engineer and a set of tools to get it out of the box. (good thing we have both)
Zora got some “Fancy Nancy” books and dress up clothes. Instead of putting them on herself, she wanted to dress daddy in them. He was ok with the tiara, but drew the line at fairy wings.
Zane examines the Mario Bros. Monopoly game (he also got a Labryinth game that he studied for a long time)
A little food break here:
Six Cheese Crabmeat Lasagna (we used to make it as Manicotti, but Lasagna is much easier)
The snacks, including some Cheesy poof things from Hillbilly Housewife…they were the texture of pie crust, with a lot of cheesy goodness. I think if we would have frozen them first they would have been more ball shape, but they melted before they got a crust on them so they looked more like cookies. You can’t eat just one. We also had some bone-in ham (made last night), summer sausage, cheese, bread, crackers and the requisite candy and cookies. (not pictured, the green beans how my grandma made them, with bacon and flour schmutz.)
We also had a cherry pie. I was planning on sending cherry pies home with people, but for some reason, only one of my five pie plates were in the cabinet. (all of my guests seemed to remember that they were in their kitchens, after previous pies sent home), so I used a big pan that my mom sent with us one time to make the last “pie” with all the crust on the top. lol. She didn’t seem to mind taking her pan home “dirty” at all. We also made three batches of fudge and sent home a batch with each family.
Both kids got Morphibians, remote control cars that can, theoretically, handle water. Zane played with it later, once it was calmer, but Zora was ready to dig right in. If it didn’t listen to her, she would scold it and point which direction it was supposed to go, and then pick it up and move it. Grandpa and Uncle Steve helped her learn how to steer it.
Finally, we got to the big gift. I was taking video so there aren’t any picture of opening it, but it was a wii, some accessories, and a few games. Zane was VERY excited. Zora kept thinking every package was meant for Zane and would deliver the item to Zane with a “here ya go Zane”. We played Mario Kart and some of the Wii Sports game it came with. It was a BALL! We have played with it every day since. It was a hoot to watch people playing, and we spent the rest of the day taking turns on the wii.
Steve’s gift to Zane was “Paper Mario” for Wii. When Zane opened it, he actually commented ” Awesome!” after opening it, the first time we had ever heard him say that. He was VERY excited about the game.
Not pictured directly (although probably in the background) are the gifts from Grammie Z: a Breyer’s stable/cafe (yeah, weird combination, but Zora loves it) for Zora, and the “Outbreak” game that Zane has been eyeing for several months.
An incredibly fun Christmas for all. One of the most relaxed Christmases in recent memory.
