So the night before Christmas, my parents came over for our traditional dinner of cheese, crackers, and Chex Mix. (It's delicious, don't judge.)

Afterwards, we descended on the tree and let Zooey open her presents. What she's got here is a great drawing board with a magnetic pen.

The second gift was this little baby doll. When Nick took it out of the package he forgot to remove one of the strings on the back, so Zooey thought it was an ornament and immediately hung it on the tree.

This is an awesome floor keyboard that was given to Zooey by her Mamow and Peepaw. (Remember the one in the movie Big? It's like a home-sized version of that.) It's got different settings so the keys can sound like different instruments. Super cool.

Playing with several toys at once. And why not? It's as decadent as the late-era Roman Empire around here.

And checking herself out (with Penguin) in the Christmas photo.

Christmas! Christmas Christmas Christmas! The big day finally arrived, and with it came an insane amount of enthusiasm from a certain little girl we know. First thing in the morning the three of us had a gift exchange in our jammies. Here's Zooey opening The Snowy Day, one of my favorite books from when I was little.

Then we went over to Grandma and Papa Joe's house. Here's Zooey having a chat with Grandma and Boo Boo. (Grandma and Papa Joe are in the process of moving, so that's why there's a bit of clutter in the background.)

This is the first of two tea party sets Zooey received. She used the container for this one as a watering can and went back and forth across the living room pretending to water the furniture. Pretty cute.

And then she got this sweet Razor mini-scooter, which she proceeded to race around the house for a couple of hours. I was amazed how quickly she caught onto this! She'll have a motorcycle within the year, I just know it.

Both Daddy and daughter fascinated by the train.

And here we're having a milk party (she insisted on pouring milk instead of tea) with Grandma and Penguin.

By this point, it was becoming obvious that both Zooey and I were coming down with colds, so when we came back to Lawrence we only went over to my mom's house for a few minutes. While we were there, though, Zooey received this awesome homemade pillow from my talented Aunt Judy. Check it out! It's covered with penguins! Aunt Judy also made the adorable apron she's wearing.

Zooey was SO excited about this pillow. Here are a couple of shots of her cuddling up with the fabulous penguin pillow.