From us and other family, Ashlyn got some wonderful things on Christmas Eve.
She received a farm animal puzzle, some cute clothes, an Elmo's World DVD about pets, and this penguin counting toy.
You put the fish in his mouth and he counts them. Aaron got a book from Ashlyn and some cable clips for the computer from me. I got some much needed (and SO comfy) new pillows for the bed from Aaron. I couldn't wait to go to bed and snuggle with them! He also got me a beautiful set of Christmas books including The Gift of the Magi, A Christmas Carol, and The Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey. After we opened presents we read The Night Before Christmas and set out milk and cookies for Santa.
Christmas morning we came down to see that Santa came! Ashlyn must have been a good girl this year. :) In her stocking was a new book about a polar bear, a car with an elephant driver that makes both elephant and car noises when you shake it and then zooms off, and a Cabbage Patch doll!
She likes the doll, but it looks a lot more real than any other doll she has (she mainly has stuffed animals) so she's a little iffy about it, but I think once she gets more used to it she'll start to love it. Ali also got a stocking with a can of tuna (she is getting a water fountain, but we haven't found quite the right one yet) and she gobbled it up for breakfast!
She actually had her head completely in the stocking before Aaron could get the camera. It was really cute.
The big gift Santa brought Ashlyn this year was a Disney princess adventure hut. It is like a little tent house with a tube attached to crawl through.
A friend of ours has a daughter who was born just 10 hours after Ashlyn and they have a tube like this without the hut part. They had it from when one of their sons was younger. She warned us that their little girl was scared to crawl through the tube at first, so we prepared ourselves in case Ashlyn was unsure about it, too. But she LOVES it! She's a few months older than when the other little girl first saw their tube, so I think that helped. She has been playing in it, crawling through the tube, taking toys with her, all sorts of stuff. It is so cute to watch! We also made pigs in a blanket for breakfast (one of Aaron's family's traditions that we've kept going) and read the story of the birth of Jesus. We also couldn't miss the Disney Christmas Parade!
After all the excitement, Aaron and I decided to go through all the toys in her toy box downstairs and put it into three piles: keep downstairs, put upstairs in her room, and toys she's outgrown (that's why there are toys all over the floor). First we took all the toys out of the toy box. Ashlyn had a blast just sitting among all these toys and playing with ones she hadn't seen in awhile (all the while wearing a just-a-tad-too-small Santa hat)!
After it was empty, we took some of the toys upstairs so we could start turning her room into a playroom as well for when I'm up there cleaning or just for a change of pace. The pile of toys she's outgrown went somewhere else to wait on getting put in a box and stored. Before putting the downstairs toys away, I wiped down the toy box. While I did this, Ashlyn played in her tent.
Again, we hope you all had a merry Christmas and have a wonderful new year!
I'm glad you guys had a great Christmas! That hut looks like so much fun! I need to start organizing Dawson's toys, too, my goal is to have it finished by next weekend.
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