Christmasing - part 5

Christmas morning in a hotel room is a very different experience, but stockings filled to the brim, a pile of presents, and even a small little tree go a long way. And Christmas is magical for little people no matter the location. At least it was for Liam. 

Since we had an adjoining room with my mom and brother, we set up "Christmas" in their room after we put Liam and River to bed on Christmas Eve.

In the morning, we went next door and Liam and River got straight to work opening their gifts. 
 We went together with my mom and Molly to get River this walker wagon. Both boys love it: River enjoys standing up with it, and Liam is enjoying pushing River around in it. Let's just say it's a good thing River is always wearing a protective helmet... 
 
Rather than buying and bringing gifts for all of the adults, we decided to instead exchange names for stockings. That way, everyone got a number of small gifts, but it was all still quite manageable.

 
 

 I was going to do these same photo collages for my mom and I as well, but I ran out of time. I thought I'd go ahead with the post anyway... 

 

After all of the stockings and gifts were opened, we all rode the elevator downstairs for Christmas breakfast. 
 


 
 
 Rebecca was smitten with River, and he didn't seem to mind one little bit.
 
 Later that evening, we went out to dinner at Ranoush, a Syrian restaurant in the Delmar Loop. We decided on a  middle eastern restaurant since basically everything else was closed for the holiday. It was a good choice.

 The food was delicious: Falafel, kibbeh, tabbouleh, fatayer, hummus, baba ganoush, warak inab.   

But, as Forest was quick to point out, all the different flavors were best wrapped together in one pita.  
River thought the pita part was great. 
 
And so did Liam. Although his favorite part of the evening was the belly dancer who shimmied her way around the restaurant, stopping at our table several times to Liam's delight. He clapped and squealed with glee, but didn't want to get up and dance with her when she offered.
 
 And my favorite part: the baklava. Mmmm...

 After dinner, we drove to Santa's Magical Kingdom, where we were dazzled by millions of lights. Well, Liam was dazzled, everyone else in the car kept telling me to drive faster, and I couldn't help but think about all those watts of electricity for a bit of entertainment. 
 
 And that is how we spent the day. Gabriel has already said that next year we aren't going anywhere for the holiday, but it was fun to something different.

I have one more post to go, and then we'll wrap this whole thing up.

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