Play Day

In many parts of the world, yesterday was Boxing Day.  In my former home, Ireland, it was St. Stephen’s Day.  But here, it was just the day after Christmas.  Hubby had to go to work, my parents flew home to see my grandmother and aside from discount decoration shopping, the kids and I just stayed home.  And played.

Christmas Day left little time for the girls to play with their new toys.  They slept until nearly 8 (which is also when my parents and sister arrived) we let them play with their big gifts—a balance bike for Sugarplum and  a tents and tunnels set for Honeybun—outside because we live in Florida and we can do that.  We came in and had a little breakfast.  We did our stockings and then I gave them a little craft project.

We held the girls off on opening presents while we waited for the rest of my family to arrive so didn’t start the gift opening until nearly 10:30.  A lot of love in the family means a lot of presents and it took us nearly 3 hours to get everything opened!  We then let the girls play with their toys for a while before we got dressed, took our yearly family picture and headed to my Aunt’s house for dinner.

SONY DSC The rushed Christmas afternoon left a lot of unopened toys and goodies that we were all dying to get into, so we spent all of yesterday just exploring our new things.  The girls and I completed a US floor puzzle, played Princess Yahtzee twice, read new books, played Fishing for letters three times, worked with modeling clay and played Princess Dominos twice.  There was definitely a puzzle, game and craft theme in gifts this year which I love since we already have so many toys that make noise or require little imagination and problem solving.

And the great part is we’re not even done!  I started the morning by building a giant train track with our old and new pieces and we still have a Sophia the 1st wall puzzle, Robot time dominos, Hangman, Spin Art and more that we haven’t opened yet!