Olivia's First Christmas

It has been forever since our last update and we  have been so busy with Christmas, New Years, and a bit of a sleeping issue.  Here is the Olivia's First Christmas recap!

To recap Christmas, Olivia had quite the busy first Christmas.  She had three celebrations and two adorable little dresses for each!  Our first Christmas was with the Hart family on Sunday December 20th.  She was a good little girl and enjoyed lots of floor time with her big Cousin Tyler.  There is a hilarious picture of the two of them on the floor with pacifiers in their mouths! She was spoiled with presents and love!

The second Christmas celebration was with Dan and I.  On Saturday before Christmas a huge snowstorm came through and dumped over 2 feet of snow in Maryland.  Olivia enjoyed the snow and when I took her outside to "play" she fell asleep with the snow falling on her face!  As a result, Howard County Public Schools closed for 3 days and Dan was home with us!  So on Tuesday night we celebrated our family Christmas.  We had a nice dinner and opened presents.  Olivia received a first Christmas ornament from both myself and Dan.  In the middle of our celebration Olivia had a bit of a fussy spell, crying for 30 minutes, so that put a memorable damper in the evening.  Regardless it was a fun evening!  We will always remember our first family celebration!

Her third Christmas celebration included a five day, four night trip to Ocean City!  She was a joy in the car, sleeping the entire ride, and we successfully fit all of her things and our things in the car for the trip!  We are lucky her Gram and Grandpa Puryear had lots of baby gear to help lessen our load.

In Ocean City she met her cousin Emma and her Aunt Jill and Uncle Steve.  Emma loved her cousin and was such a big help with her, bringing Baby Olivia her blankets, pacifier, and toys!  In March Emma will become a big sister and I know she will be wonderful.  A funny story though, one morning Jill was holding Olivia during breakfast and Emma come over after a few minutes and told Jill,  "Uncle Dan  needs to hold Baby Olivia." Jill laughed and made room for Emma on her lap with Olivia!  It was adorable. 

On Christmas Eve Olivia had her first church outing, attending Gram and Grandpa Puryear's  children program.  The music was lovely and Olivia was quiet the entire time...quite the little angel!  Christmas morning Dan and I were awake before Olivia and when we finally heard  her we peeked over at the pack n play to see her laying there sucking her thumb!  We told her Santa had come and it was time to celebrate!  Yeah, she had no idea what was going on, but she gave us a smile. 

Most of Christmas morning she spent kicking around on the floor and opening Christmas presents.  The Puryear family has a tradition of opening Sleigh Presents after dinner, a tradition dating back to when Lee was a child.  Olivia spent most of sleigh in the swing, sleeping, but at one point Emma was getting upset and started crying and then on the opposite side of the table Olivia started crying.  I started laughing and said, "well this is certainly a new era of sleigh."  It was a laughable moment and capped off a lovely Christmas day!


The rest of the week we had a nice time hanging with family and Olivia even had her first trip to the OC Boardwalk!  Of course she slept in the stroller most of the time, but I am sure this summer she will have more fun visiting it! 

We had a lovely Christmas and Olivia received many lovely gifts.  We feel extremely blessed this year having Olivia in our lives and that is honestly the best present we have received in years!