Christmas Day

We had all these plans for Christmas Eve. We were going to go to church, leave cookies and milk for Santa, read Twas the Night Before Christmas, track Santa's progress on a website I heard about and build the excitement. But instead, Katerina decided to catch up on her sleep. We found her at 6pm with her head on her Dora stool sound asleep.

When she woke in the morning, we took her down to the family room to show her the fireplace doors were open. Proof that Santa had come down the chimney.

Constantin and his mother showing Katerina how Santa entered the house

We then went to the living room where Constantin had quickly placed, next to the tree, half
eaten cookies and swirled milk around the glass this morning while I kept her occupied.

Her major gift was a new kitchen - stove and refrigerator. Thank you whoever posted about it on the Panda Yahoo Group. It's a pink wooden set that looks very similar to the Pottery Barn set, but much cheaper at Costco. There were several other gifts from Santa, us, Joe, Uncle John & Aunt Sue and Constantin's parents. In typical Katerina style, she spent time on each one before moving on to the next. I actually had to encourage her to open the gifts. At one point, when there were three more gifts to go she had had enough and said she would open them later. She just wanted to spend time with what she had opened already.

And then, time to go to Uncle Bobby and Aunt Susie's in her beautiful new dress that they gave her for her birthday; complete with the jaunty little beret.