Florida Christmas

Since we were traveling for Christmas this year, we decided to have our family Christmas on Saturday the 19^th. We scheduled the whole day for our ‘family’ day, and from the moment the kids woke up – revered it at “Christmas Day.”

Dan and I laid out all of the presents on Friday evening, and prepared our infamous “Christmas Dish” for the morning. The kids were so excited as they awoke to find a sea of presents in the family room. Their Imaginext Pirate Ship and Castle were not wrapped – so they played with those immediately, while Dan and I proceeded to wake up and start the coffee. They would have been content with those two toys the whole morning. We had to tear them away to open more, literally.

Several of the other favorites this year included: Drew’s Tickle Me Elmo from Uncle Greg, a lego table and legos, a large dinosaur, and more train pieces for the train table.

Following the opening of presents, we enjoyed a yummy brunch of ‘holiday dish.’ Since the Hacker household doesn’t do casseroles, Dan named his egg, cheese, and sausage dish – Holiday Dish, which is only to be made on holidays.

One of the best parts of our Florida Christmas, was just being able to spend the day together with no 'To do.’ Or maybe a better way to phrase it would be that the ‘To do’ list was to be with the family. We spent the entire morning just playing with the kids, and enjoying being together as a family. It was wonderful! We built new train layouts using the new train connectors, built lego cars and trucks (which took longer to make than they stayed together), read some new Christmas stories, and played with pirate ships, castles and shot off cannons – all of the things the boys enjoy playing with these days.

Following naps that afternoon, we headed down to Cranes Roost for dinner and a walk around the lake to look at the lights and enjoy the music. The restaurant we were headed to was closed, so we ended up eating a nutritious (laugh) dinner at Steak and Shake. Much to our surprise the boys dinners were free and they were provided with these awesome little paper cars, stickers and crayons to put it together with. The boys were occupied until their meals came, and then well after they finished. It was a surprisingly delightful meal. To offset out healthy meal we enjoyed a nice cool walk around the lake to look at the pretty lights.