I Don't Like Christmas

I don't like Christmas...but I love a good party!

Saturday was my dad's side of the family's annual Christmas party. Despite the icy/snowy weather there was a great turn out and we all had a wonderful time!

Over the last few weeks Lily's mantra has been, "I don't like Christmas." It's not the birth of Christ that Lily takes exception to...it's that jolly little man in the red suit!

I love to see Lily spend time with all of her cousins. Charlie was really cute with Lily and made her a special pretzel sculpture. He also made a special snowman and snow castle and requested that Lily come outside several times to check his progress. I love to see Charlie's tender side with Lily!

Christina was her usual sweet self. She even showed up on Santa's "Good List" as a super big cousin and Lily would definitely agree!


This year something really special happened at the party. Lily 'clicked' with one of my cousin's kids, Maggie. Maggie is 6 years old and was absolutely wonderful with Lily!

It was amazing to watch Maggie interact with Lily. At 6 Maggie was able to figure out how to relate to Lily better than many adults! Maggie got down on Lily's level to speak to her, never came on too strong, always asked Lily if she wanted to do whatever it was Maggie was interested in doing...basically she never pushed Lily beyond her comfort zone and the two became fast friends! In fact, Lily went off and played with Maggie for quite a long time and never once checked in with us. That's a MAJOR step for our sweet girl!

Speaking of major steps, at the Christmas Party Lily watched her first video. It was a Christmas video with a few short segments with Winnie The Pooh and Spot. Two of Lily's favorites! Lily was so excited to see Pooh and Spot and their friends actually come to life on TV!

Tony told me later he was surprised that I let Lily watch the video. Honestly, I was a little bit, too. But, hey, it's Winnie the Pooh and Spot and more importantly it was just so sweet to see Lily and Maggie hanging around together. I didn't want to do anything to disrupt that!



As you saw above in the picture with Christina, again this year Santa stopped by the party for a visit. Unfortunately, Tony was out of the room again and missed Santa completely. I wish that didn't happen every year! I would love Tony to see that he and Santa have the exact same beautiful blue eyes. Oh well, there's always next year!

As I mentioned before Lily "doesn't like Christmas" so there wasn't a chance she was going to sit on the Big Guy's lap (even if Mommy went with her). She did shake Santa's hand and blow him a kiss.





To be honest, if Lily never sits on Santa's lap...that's perfectly fine with me. I totally get it. I'm 43 years old and I still hate clowns. Maybe I should say I loathe clowns. Seriously. There isn't a chance I would sit on a clown's lap. Nope. No way. Never!