Family Time

This afternoon Sydney and I drove to my sister's house to have a long overdue visit with her and her family!  It was so nice to reconnect with them and have a visit with my nephews too!

My sister, Liane,  put out a fantastic spread of snacks for us and we ate and chatted and then all worked together to help trim the Christmas tree.  It was Sydney's first time ever decorating a tree, she was so into it, had so much fun putting all on the ornaments on!

She managed to get most of them in one cluster on one little section of the tree, it was too cute!

She even got to put the star on the top of the tree!

She loved the decorating so much that we just kept right on going and put up decorations all throughout the house and outside.  It was great fun!

We took the opportunity to have our Christmas gift exchange as well.  Sydney had great fun putting all of the presents that we brought under the newly decorated tree!

I tried in vain to convince Sydney to wait until Hannukah starts at the end of this week to open the presents from Liane and her family but she convinced me to let her open just one!

My sister got her a very cool gift, a suet bird feeder and kids bird book!  Liane loves bird watching and she wrote a very special message in the front of the book to Sydney telling her that she hoped that Sydney would love birds as much as her auntie one day!  The book is very cool, it has stickers of each bird listed inside in the back and when you spot one of the birds in the book you take the sticker out of the back and put it on that bird's info page!  Can't wait to try it out with Sydney!

My Brother-in-law gave Sydney a very cool gift too, a knock-off iphone5 that he had gotten and wasn't using and thought Sydney could use as a toy.  She was most excited to have her very own iphone!!

When we got home Sydney begged me to open my gift as well, so indulged her and let her rip it open.  I was so happy to get something that I have wanted for over a year now, an artist's easel and painting kit!  I am so excited to try my hand at painting something!  Sydney, of course, thought it was for her and asked me if she could set the easel up and paint something right then!  It's going to be a challenge keeping her fingers away from my gift!

It was a wonderful day of spending time together with my family and getting a little shot of Christmas spirit!  We have decided to make this decorating party an annual tradition going forward, I love it!  What a great way to start the week!