Merry Birthiversimas!

This was our very first Christmas on our own, and so much fun! Benjamin woke up at about 7 a.m., as usual, but Paul and I had already been awake a little while, partly in anticipation, and partly because I was waking up every half hour to blow my nose, suffering from a cold and a horrible NyQuil-induced sleep. Paul went into his room while I went into the front room with the camera ready to take pictures, but he wouldn't come out of his room. Finally after some coaxing, he came out, bleary-eyed and confused to see what Santa had brought him. It took a few minutes for him to warm up to the excitement, but he had a fun day.
His big presents from Santa included a climber slide thing, a Little People barn and zoo lot, and a soccer ball (which was his clear favorite). He also got nice presents from his grandparents; a Little People Noah's Ark and a green wooden marble track (my dad made this to replicate the one his grandfather made for him when he was a kid that we all still play with when we come over). He loves all his presents though, and has been playing with all of them all week.
For Christmas Eve dinner, I surprised us all with a pretty good ham. I didn't want to buy a huge 5 pound ball of meat, so I bought a ham "steak" with no clue how I was going to prepare it. Anyways, I ended up pan frying it in butter and maple syrup and it turned out pretty good! We had a nice fancy table setting and sparkling grape juice to go with our meal. It was fun. Then we told Benjamin the condensed Christmas story from Luke and put him to bed. The rest of the evening, we spent setting up Christmas, cleaning up and just relaxing by the fire. Paul was nice enough to scoop a dead bird out of the fire place and build us a nice Christmas Eve fire.
For breakfast, we enjoyed beautiful, fluffy home-made orange rolls, bacon, eggs, grapefruit and orange juice. It was a treat!
Mainly we were spoiled by our parents this year with our presents, but we also got each other some nice things. Santa brought Paul some sweet kicks for Christmas, but there's no way he could like his present as much as I liked mine. Paul surprised me with a "Magic House" year-pass, which I was SO excited about! The Magic House is one of the best-rated family attractions in the U.S and happens to be just 5 minutes down the road from us. Since it costs $7.50 for children AND adults, I've never justified going, but with the pass, it'll pay for itself in less than 4 times. So I call that my ticket to sanity for the winter since it's too cold to go to the zoo or the playground.
On the 28th, we celebrated Paul's 27th Birthday! We had a nice relaxing day together and a plain yellow birthday cake with no frosting, which was what he requested. Paul says he doesn't mind, but he celebrates his anniversary, Christmas and birthday all within 10 days. hence the term we coined for it-his birthiversimas.