Best. Christmas. Ever.

Dad, Hannah and I all agree that this has been the best Christmas ever. No question, no contest.

Hannah has been excited for Christmas for awhile now, putting magnetic ornaments on her Countdown to Christmas calendar, reading Christmas stories and dancing to Jingle Bells every night since the first of the month. However, the fun really started yesterday, when we all went to Navy Pier to Winter Wonderfest. We went a couple of years ago, when Hannah was two, but couldn’t go last year because the weather on Christmas Eve was bad. This year, it was just rainy, so we drove downtown to check it out. This time was SO FUN because Hannah is big enough now to ride most of the rides, and she loved that! I took her on her first Ferris wheel ride, which she loved, and she rode lots of other rides, too. We all loved looking at the Christmas trees and the lights, and spending time together. There were so many fun things to do there, and it was just perfect for little kids. Hannah insisted on wearing her Santa hat the whole time.

After we came home, we made cookies for Santa, and then some friends came over to drop off some gifts, so we got to visit with them for awhile. They have a son Hannah’s age, so the two of them were having a great time. They’re both super-smart, so it was fun listening to them talk to each other. After they left, we had our traditional “snack dinner”; every year on Christmas Eve, we eat snacks for dinner and play games. This year, Hannah was big enough to play the games, too, so we played Kids of Carcassonne and Horton Hears A Who while we ate chips and guacamole, stuffed celery, pizza, and cheese and crackers.

Hannah finally got to bed after 9:00 (it had been a very big, very exciting day). Sometime around 10:00, when I was wrapping her last gift (we got behind on wrapping this year, and didn’t get any of hers done ahead of time), we heard her talking in her room. Dad went to check on her and was gone for quite awhile. When he came back, he was chuckling…he said he’d gone into her room to find her up and out of bed, with her Santa hat on. She said, “Is it morning yet? I looked outside, and it looks pretty bright out there to me!” We both thought it was the sweetest thing – the perfect story about a little girl completely beside herself with Christmas excitement. Dad did convince her to go back to bed, but it’s a good thing Santa didn’t come early last night or he might have run into Hannah!

This morning, I woke up to the sounds of a little girl padding down the hallway…at 6:18 a.m. Who knows how long she was up before that – I imagine she waited about as long as she could possibly stand! At any rate, she was just quietly standing in the doorway to our bedroom when I whispered, “Merry Christmas, Hannah,” and then she RAN into the room giggling and shouting, “Merry Christmas!” She was wearing her Santa hat and was VERY excited. She managed to wait for me and Dad to get up, which took awhile because it was really early. She was thrilled to see Santa had eaten all the cookies and drunk all the milk she’d left for him, and that the reindeer had eaten all their carrots.

Hannah must have been very good this year, because Santa brought her lots of fun gifts. I think her favorite gift from Santa is her “bouncy ball,” which is one of those plastic balls with a handle that little kids can sit on and bounce. She bounced all over the house on that today. A close second would probably be her dinosaur Legos, followed by the big dinosaur play mat with lots of plastic dinosaurs and pterosaurs.

I think her favorite thing from us was her “tying shoes”…she’s been really wanting shoes with shoelaces, so we got her some and told her she could practice learning to tie them. She put them right on and wore them around with her pajamas all day. She was just so excited about everything, and couldn’t figure out what to do first or do anything for very long. It was wonderful to watch…it just made us think that this is one of the best things that Christmas is about: a little girl, happy and excited and so joyful! Hannah even gave us a present that she’d made and wrapped at school, and she even kept it a secret! It’s a photo of her with “Happy Holidays, Love, Hannah” written around it, and she drew a picture on the back of the three of us and the cats. It is awesome.

We spent the day in our pajamas playing with Christmas presents…Hannah had gotten lots of fun toys, of course, plus Dad got a Nintendo DS and I got new games for the Wii, so there were plenty of things for us to do. It was just so much fun watching Hannah…she was excited about every single thing that happened today!

Such an awesome day…and now, I’m looking forward to getting some sleep. It was an EARLY day, too!

Mom