Merry Christmas Y'all...

...that's what was on some guy's shirt as we exited the Wilmington, NC airport baggage claim. It cracked me up and if I hadn't been so tired, I would have laughed. By the time we reached the beach house where Andy normally stays when he goes to visit Emma, we were sufficiently exhausted. We slept for a few hours and then went to pick up Emma at 3pm so we could spend about 3 hours with her on Christmas Day. Unfortunately, as most 6-year-old kids do, she stayed up late with anticipation and woke up early to find out what Santa brought for her. By the time we picked her up, she was in no mood to do anything. She fell asleep within about 5 minutes of arriving at the beach house and didn't wake up until it was time to go home. Rather than fight fatigue, we postponed our Christmas celebration for the next day.

Wednesday was a lot better. Emma was well rested, cheerful and we were able to celebrate Christmas during the 3 hours we had to spend with her. We read the Christmas story with her and she opened the gifts we had brought from her Aunt, Uncle, Cousins and Grandparents. The main thing she got was an 18-inch doll from Grandma Carol and Grandpa Jon and a trunk to carry it in. She really liked it and she loved the little outfits that Grandma Carol made--one of them even looked like the school uniform that Emma wears. She also dressed up the doll at night so it was ready for bed in its pink pajamas and each morning, she would dress it up so it was ready to play.
We also got her the board game, Mouse Trap--which I remember playing with at Grandma's house, and she loved it. We played with it several times and she got pretty good at setting it up in order.

On Thursday, we spent the bulk of the day at the Wilmington Children's Museum. Emma created colors in the "science lab" and then Andy put on a very entertaining puppet show. He used a variety of animals and was so entertaining that Emma got inspired and she put on her own puppet show with another little girl. It was hilarious!! They also had some new exhibits where the kids could sing karaoke and dance on stage. Emma loves stuff like that. She really enjoys performing and seeing herself on stage.

We then went and saw the movie, Enchanted. Emma enjoyed it. After the movie, Emma got ravenously hungry, so we went to a McDonald's and she got a Happy Meal. On the Happy Meal box, there were instructions on how to do a dance called the Strawberry Shake. In an effort to entertain, (and because I'm convinced that Andy LOVES to embarrass himself--a quality that has entertained me on numerous occasions) Andy announced to the McDonald's workers that his daughter wanted him to perform the Strawberry Shake for them. When he was done, they applauded and then it was Emma's turn to do the Strawberry Shake. The McDonald's employees must have appreciated her performance a lot more because they gave her a free ice cream cone!! Andy got nothing.

We capped off the day by going to Emma's favorite restaurant, Hiro's. It's similar to Benihana. It was very entertaining. The chef makes food in front of you and Emma's favorite is when he turned some onions into a volcano. The food was great and we really enjoyed it.

Emma spent two nights with us at the beach house and we spent most of Friday and Saturday there playing with her toys. We did go to the Aquarium on Friday and the Library on Saturday. It was a lot of fun.
After droping Emma off, we had to hurry back to the beach house, finish packing and get to the airport where we would have missed our flight...if it hadn't been delayed. We did, however, have to reschedule our connecting flight out of Charlotte, but it worked out in the end because we ended up flying into LAX instead of stoping in Phoenix and then Santa Ana. All-in-all, it was a good weekend and it's hard to believe that Christmas is over--even though our Christmas went on for four days.