::some christmas::

We had a great Christmas. It was very quiet--just the three of us--and very fun. We were more than spoiled by our families.
Here's Max on Christmas eve. He's wearing his new sock monkey PJs and putting out the santa cookies. We all got new PJs which is so fun. When my mom was in town she bought me some and wrapped them up. It was perfect.




I could hardly sleep all night. I had a cold and my nose was all stuffed so I could hardly breathe. I felt like a little kid though, waking up every half hour, looking at the clock and just wishing it was time to get up!
We told Max that he couldn't leave his room until 7AM. We gave him a little travel alarm clock so he'd know exactly what time it was. When I got up at 6:30 to shower (after lying in bed awake since at least 5:30) he was totally conked out in bed. As I was drying my hair at the stroke of 7 he popped into the bathroom "It's SEVEN!!" and proved it when I asked him to show me on his clock. It was pretty funny.

Santa brought something pretty cool. A Buzz Lightyear telescoping robot arm. At least it doesn't make noise.



He was really excited even though what he really wanted from santa was an EVE robot from the WallE movie. Unfortunately Santa couldn't find her anywhere. But come on, like a robot arm isn't cooler?

We had a great morning, taking a break from the gift giving fun for some german pancakes. Mmmmm.

This picture sure does make them look delectable. And they are, by the way.

Max helped Kris wrap the presents that were for me--and he labeled them all. They turned out very very cute, naturally, and he only ruined one shirt in the process (as a result of using a permanent marker). I had to take a picture of all of them of course. But I won't post them all here.

I think this held my favorite present from him.
Sock monkey slippers. I love them.

Cute AND warm. And so Max.


We got to have several video chats with both of our families which was definitely fun. It's hard to feel too far away when you can see everybody's faces and talk to them.
We also got to do a big computer conference call with Murphy on his mission in Argentina. That was really fun, and so amazing that it actually worked. It was really fun to hear his voice. He seems to be doing great and we're so proud of him.


I didn't get pictures of all the presents of course (I missed some of the more big exciting presents), and don't want to make a big list of all of them here, but just want to say thanks to our families for all the love. Here are a few additional fun pictures of the day.














And now we've put away all the christmas stuff for next year. And we look forward to it. Especially Max who's been trying hard to understand how long a year actually is. He was confused enough when he woke up on Dec 26th, came in and asked us permission to go into the living room and see what Santa had brought. Wishful thinking. It would be fun though.

-> The Day itself <-

It's taken me so long to post about Christmas because I have a whole bunch of fun pictures of Christmas morning, and I was trying to figure out a way I could share a lot of them with you without the post ending up about 12 feet long. I think I've got it figured out, you'll have to tell me what you think once you get to them.
Now to the story:
We expected that Max would wake up pretty early Christmas morning, as he usually does every single other morning. However he slept in. At least an hour past when he usually gets up. It was really nice. But then we couldn't get him out of bed. He's funny because a lot of the time he calls to us to ask permission to get out of bed. He didn't used to do that, but now he does. It's funny. So anyway, he called out and said "Is it sunny?" Which is Max-speak for is it time to get up. We said yes and he should get out of bed and see if Santa came. He didn't get out of bed. Kris went into his room and said "Do you think that Santa came?" Max said no. He didn't think so. We were both like, "huh?" So weird. So anyway, once we finally got him out of bed and into the living room he was excited to see that Santa had eaten all his cookies and left him a note. He enjoyed his stocking too. Among other things he got a ball that's supposed to be easy to catch, and an orange. They both turned into Katamari balls almost immediately. Good job Santa!

Then we moved into the kitchen to eat what I'm told is the traditional Hendricks family Christmas breakfast. Captain Crunch with crunchberries. Or "Christmas cereal" as Max likes to call it.



Then, energized by all the vitamins and minerals in our breakfast we went back to tackle the presents.
I'm going to do my best to keep this post from turning into a list of the fabulous presents we received. Suffice it to say, our dear far away families took very good care of us, and we felt very well loved.
One of the things I really love about gift giving on Christmas is the opportunity to really think about the people we buy gifts for, and an excuse to spend money on them. It's usually really fun for me. I had a good time finding gifts for everybody this year, and it was obvious that others had done a lot of thinking about us. So fun!
So we went ahead and opened many fun presents, while taking numerous breaks for Max to play with his cool new toys.
Click on the pictures below to see them bigger if you want to.
Kelly and Lechelle came by right after lunch and we got to hang out for a while and swap gifts. It's fun to have them close, we always enjoy getting to be with them on special occasions. They gave Max a harmonica. It's almost driven me insane already, but not quite. He loves it and calls it a "furmonica."

After they left we turned on the video chat and got to watch everybody in my family open up the gifts we had gotten for them. It was fun to get to see that, it made us feel lots closer than we actually are, that's for sure.


After the chat we finished up our gifts so that we could get ready to go to our friends' house to have dinner. It was really really hard to tear Max away from his new loves.
My favorite thing that I got from Kris was an awesome ring that he made for me himself. It is so cool! I can't believe I get to wear something that 's so pretty that he made himself. I'm trying to encourage him to put up a post about how he made it sometime soon. We'll see.
It turns out this was a good Christmas for me as far as jewelry was concerned, check it out. The ring is in the lower left corner:

Between Kris my mom and Char I want for nothing!

We had a great time at dinner with our friends, and then headed home to go to bed. We were all pretty exhausted.
Thanks to all our family for all the hard work they did making us feel special and cared for. We really felt it. We missed all of you but we knew you were thinking of us!
I'll leave you with my favorite shot of the day. It's Max reading the directions to his new marble set very carefully and seriously. He "read" them like that for probably about ten minutes.

And to all a good night!