Hooray for Christmas!

The rule in our house is that the kids can't come wake us up until 7:00 on Christmas morning. I'd already been up since 5:00, and I woke Adam up at 6:50 to give him a little time to wake up. In past years he's been too tired to participate much in Christmas morning. He just sits, puffy eyed, against the couch and does the video taping. I wanted him to be more involved this year so I woke him up a little early. It seemed to work pretty well. The kids all came into our room and we threatened to make them wait another hour because they were being so loud in their room, but since we're not total Scrooges, we accepted three very heart felt and sincere apologies and went to the front room to see what the magic of Santa had brought in the night. Since we don't have a fire place, we hung the stockings on the piano and Santa put their presents in neat piles under their stocking. Santa always goes overboard on stockings so the over flow goes above the stockings on top of the piano. Next year Santa's really got to remember not do buy so much for the stockings!

I love the expression we caught on Hailey's face when she opened her present.

Hailey got an American Girl doll this year. Santa really splurged this year. It wasn't even from ebay! I kept telling her she probably wouldn't get one, so she wasn't planning on it. I looked over at her at one point and caught her pinching her self on the cheek. She looked up at me and smiled and said, "Yep, it's real".

This is what happens when you give a baby a candy cane. STICKY!!!!

Maggie really wanted a Wowie Alive Lion Cub. It purrs and growls and sleeps etc... She named her, Mia (this is a recurring pet name in our family), and she goes where Maggie goes. (remember those commercials: "My buddy, my,buddy, my buddy, my buddy, where ever I go, he goes".....?). We definitely have a "my buddy" situation on our hands.

Logan got a set of golf clubs so he'll stop trying to use Adams. We're going to have to fix his swing though. He's learned how to swing left handed with Adam's lefty clubs, so hopefully it's correctable. He also got 20 MORE matchbox cars. That's really all the kid needs. It's all he's really played with since. That's one of those things I really don't get. He knows each and every car that's his, which are old, which are new, where he got them etc. They're all the same to me. If you have a few that's all you need as far as I can tell. Doe's he really need that many? Of course one could make the same argument about my shoes I suppose, and YES! I really do need that many!

Hmmm, we'll need to work on that stance a little too. :)

Madison in her new outfit. The only other thing she got were some Baby Signing Time videos. We already have three other baby's worth of toys, so we decided she really didn't need much. She was content with just her candy cane any way.

Adam got me a 1 hr massage and some cute new clothes and slippers I wanted.
He got new ear buds, slippers, the new John Grisham book, a movie and some other odds n' ends.

We had french toast, bacon and Orange Julius, our traditional Christmas morning breakfast, and spent the rest of the day playing ,"Don't Break the Ice", and "Cootie", and watching videos. It was so fun. The big snow storm missed us somehow :( But it did flurry enough to feel "Christmas-y". Later in the day while we were in the family room watching movies, Logan pointed out a large wrapped box and asked what it was. I went to investigate and discovered a present for me that Adam hid down there. I was so surprised! I opened it and found a beautiful mid-length wool dress coat in "winter white" that I'd been coveting for months! It was such a fun surprise!
For me, it was the best Christmas in a long time. For some reason this year I didn't feel the same let down after opening presents that I usually feel. I really felt the spirit of the Holiday all day . I don't know if it's because we scaled back the gifts this year, but I think it probably was. We didn't get as much stuff, but we got what we really wanted and I think it helped us treasure what we got even more. It was a wonderful Christmas.