the eckel family

The Thanksgiving holiday has come and gone, and our family of three had a very relaxing and quiet holiday weekend. I think the best part was putting up the Christmas decorations. Jason knew that I had a hard time spending Thanksgiving by ourselves, but he knows I LOVE to decorate, so he suggested "Christmastizing" on Thursday. We put the tree together before Rylan's nap and he kept wanting to hang the ornaments before it was even complete. Then we started stringing the lights right before he went down for his nap. During his nap, we finished the lights and I prepared dinner. When Rylan woke up, I took him right to the table and he did not have a chance to see the tree. Well, let me tell you when he saw the tree after dinner he was SOOOO excited! It was priceless. He went on and on saying oooh Dadda, oooh Dadda, tree Dadda... It was great! He did help me put up a few ornaments after that and has enjoyed all the decor since.

Jason also has is old train from when he was a little boy. J thought it would be a good idea to set it up for Rylan and upon mentioning it, I think we heard choo choo Dadda, choo choo Dadda, about 500 times :)! He loves watching it go around the track a couple of times a day! We can't wait to see if Santa will bring Rylan a train this year!

We also took out "Elf on the Shelf" on Thanksgiving and Elf has been watching over Rylan each day and flying to report to Santa every night. Rylan has to find Elf when he wakes up the following morning because Elf always seems to land someplace different. We have enjoyed watching Rylan get very excited over the life-long Christmas traditions that will always remain in our hearts.

Lastly, we played our first board game with Rylan yesterday...Candyland! He did really well, amazingly enough. He had no problem waiting his turn and enjoyed finding the matching colors on the board from the card he drew. My favorite part of the experience occurred when he was kicking our butts and way in front of us. Jason and I were right next to each other near the beginning, and when it was Rylan's turn, he moved back to where we were and said, me, Mama, Dadda, because he wanted to be near us. So sweet!