Pre-Christmas Celebration

Instead of giving to each other this year, my family decided to adopt a family. I signed us up through Hallmark (Operation Breakthrough), so our family could provide food vouchers, gift cards, and tons of presents for a special little family of 4 (a single dad, his 5 year-old twin boys, and his 7 year old son.) We had such a great time shopping for winter coats, Batman action figures, Spiderman pajamas, video games, books, a skateboard, a basketball, a football, an educational game system (not totally sure...the guys sort of picked that out), lots of new clothes, new underwear...our only regret was that we weren't allowed to watch them open their gifts on Christmas morning. We could only imagine how much fun they had (because the guys were pretty amped-up, just picking it all out) We even made stockings for them (I wrote their names in glitter!) and filled them with new toothbrushes, toothpaste, hats, gloves, and some tiny pocket games. We didn't know much about the single father, but we figured he could use a new wallet, a pair of gloves, a hat, a camera, and a photo album. We all went together to divide up the list, so our Christmas shopping was basically done by December 10. So on December 21, we decided we should still get together for a little Christmas dinner at my parents' house and watch Delaney open a couple of gifts. It was really nice. It was a great way to get in to the Christmas spirit:



All for Delaney, because she's my favorite:

Play-plastic food to "cook" in her play-plastic kitchen:

Using the plastic knife to cut a plastic orange (because she's a genius):

Using her plastic knife to open her other presents (because she's watched us do this a lot, apparently?):

Destroying the ornament box (which became a whole different game): 

Delaney puts on some chapstick:

Troy puts on some chapstick:

Whitney says, "Enough with the chapstick" (it's okay, she's 2. This reaction is normal. And frequent.):

Ryan, Troy, and my brother all got signed/framed Sports Illustrated covers of Mario Chalmers (National Championship MVP and "Most Beloved Jayhawk EVER in the history of KU Basketball") from my dad, who stood in line and shook Mario's hand and everything (I'm only a tiny bit jealous.):

Delaney finally wears her new "kitty" hat so everybody can see how cute it is (notice the little green M&M in Troy's hand? We call that a bribe. And it totally worked.):

She eventually enjoys the attention and begins to "meow" for us:

Nana Beth gave Delaney a pop-up Lion King book so they briefly thumbed through it together (Delaney knows all of the characters and recently attended the Broadway musical - to which she frequently whispered "Simba" while wearing her shoes on her hands):

Sometimes dads and daughters have to have the tough conversations:

After we opened presents, we had dinner. And this happened: