Alisa's First Christmas at Home

This year was the first year we weren't with my family on Christmas. We visited them last year for Christmas when Alisa was 9 months old but this year decided to stay home. It was also the first year we had our own Christmas tree. In the past, we lived close to my parents so we'd just enjoy their tree because there wasn't room in our apartment for a decent sized tree.

We just spent the day relaxing and taking our time opening presents and then playing with them. We decided not to rush Alisa to open her presents all in one sitting. We let her open a few and then I made our traditional breakfast of sausage babies ("pigs in a blanket"), fruit salad, hash browns and cinnamon rolls. After stuffing ourselves, we opened more presents.

Our attempts at a Christmas family photo (a few days before Christmas) with the camera on a tripod using the 10-second timer:

Alisa checking out the ornaments Nana made:



Alisa got to open one present on Christmas Eve (a family tradition):

The first present Alisa opened Christmas morning was from the Chase family in Oregon (her cousins Anna, Michael & Daniel):

And here's what they gave her: Tub City (bath toy, but also fun outside of the tub):

Daddy helping with more presents:

Alisa kept stopping to lie on the bigger, unopened packages--quite silly!:

Testing all the colors on her new dry erase board (the other side is a chalkboard with her name on it--I got it at a craft fair):

All her opened presents (except those from Grandmom & Grandad that she opened last week and those from Nana that we will open when she visits in January):