Coussirat Clan: Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Sofia's Birthday 2009

We decided to stay home this year for Christmas. It was a lot of fun. Papi came in from Miami, Louis joined us from Austin and Grandma and Grandpa spent time with us too.

Here is Sofia showing off her Christmas dress on Christmas Eve.

Louis cooked an awesome Noche Buena dinner and I did enough Christmas baking to to open my own bakery. I made some of Mom's classic Christmas baked goods, the Pecan Tea Tassies and the Mexican Wedding Cookies that she always served on the Santa Claus platter so the cookies look like his beard. I also did some new things like Fruitcake Bars which were a real hit, Chocolate Sparkle cookies and I made some Gingersnaps to give to my friends.

Christmas morning was super fun. Sofia didn't really "get it" but she knew what a present was. It was a lot of fun opening gifts with her and she immediately wanted to play with whatever present she got. The first present she ran to was unwrapped (from Tio Louis, of course) so was drawn to it right away. It was a bath toy with a boat and fisherman - she loves it!

She started out so sweet and innocent, very thankful for her toy because after the first gift she thought she was done. So we'd coax her into opening another one and even then she still didn't get that there were more. Santa was good to her this year and by the last present she was asking for "More! More presents!" It was as if we created a spoiled monster and we did it in 15 minutes and watched it happen before our very eyes.

Here she is during present-overload. Too many presents, not enough hands, MOM!

Some of her favorite toys that she got were her twin baby dolls who came with a double stroller and baby swing. It was a gift from her Coussirat cousins in Flower Mound. Her Tio Louis put it all together for her and she has been playing with it ever since.

She also really loved the tricycle Daddy picked out for her. It was the last present we gave her because, as we figured, she wanted to ride it right away.

So I put boots on over her pjs, strapped on her winter coat and Daddy took her outside to learn how to pedal.

She got a lot of other really great presents from so many people! So many though I can't even list them all. We are so lucky so many people love our little girl.

After a day of play and a good long nap we were ready to celebrate this little girl's BIRTHDAY! She wasn't too excited about posing for pictures post-nap but I had to get shot of her birthday dress...

We were so excited to celebrate. I can't believe she's two whole years old!!!! Grandma and Grandpa and their good friend, Rosemary, came to help celebrate.

Grandma made Sofia's (seemingly) favorite dish, Mac n Cheese and we ate some awesome Cuban sandwiches that Louis and Dan put together. They had to impovise a bit seeing as they forgot to buy bread the day before and all the stores, save CVS Pharmacy, were closed. The only option was to make the sandwiches on CVS bought hamburger buns. I had to take a picture it was so funny! But I must say the goodness of that sandwich transcends the bread because it was still damn good.

After all the baking I'd done I baked Sofia a Betty Crocker box cake but drew Hello Kitty on there since she likes "Kitty" so much. I kept wondering what looked odd about my Hello Kitty rendition and then I realized... I forgot the whiskers! Oh well, at least this way they can't sue me for copyright infringement!

We dimmed the lights and the whole room sang Happy Birthday to her. She was a little confused but tried her hardest anyway to blow out that candle ...

and then she promptly poked Kitty in the eye.

But she loved her cupcakes ...

and round two of opening gifts with Grandma and Grandpa and birthday presents from all. We had such a fun day!

And such a fun week during all the Christmas week. Here are a few random moments from our holiday break...

playing in the neighbor's driveway where she loves to pick out her favorite rocks...