Becoming Family: Christmas Day

Christmas Day was one of the few days in the history of my household that involved my kids sleeping in. Greg and I were up and ready for the excitement to begin. Everyone had been up late on Christmas Eve. We had the inside scoop that Santa (and perhaps a helper) had taken about an hour and a half to set up a massive Lincoln Log train village. It was a beautiful sight. Marcus in particular, although Will agreed with him, had asked specifically for "choo choos and dinos" and Greg and I were excited to show them Christmas morning that Santa delivered just what they requested.

At about 8:25 am we heard Marcus moving around in his bed. I suggested that we get the kids up at 8:30. At approximately 8:28, the pup brought Greg a ball to throw for her. Greg launched it blindly right into the middle of the giant Lincoln Log train village. Huge crash. I just looked at Greg in shock and said, "What did you do!!" Thankfully a good portion of the village was spared. With a little teamwork, the village was mostly put back together 10 minutes later and we were off to get the kids up.

Marcus was ready to go see if Santa had come. Will, my boy who generally shuns sleep, wasn't so sure that leaving the comfort of his bed was something he was interested in.

(In conjuncture with Santa, we printed up some name labels this year. Each label had a family member's name on it and a picture. All of Marcus's presents had a label with his name and a picture of a stocking on it. All of Will's had snowmen. It made it really easy for the kids to help pass out presents and identify which ones were theirs. Greg had us all wear name tags so the kids could match the pictures on our tags with the presents. Thought I better explain why we were all wearing name tags in the pictures.)

We kept the kids contained so they could make the mad dash to see the presents together.

They were off! And extremely excited about their dinosaurs and trains. Which, despite all the time Santa put into building it and Greg and I took to rebuild it, was pretty much destroyed in a matter of 15 minutes.

Checking to see if Santa and his reindeer ate the treats we left for them.

And then it was time to check out the stockings.

Maya got a great big heavy new bone (that she loves to drop on people's feet). She was more than elated as she threw that heavy thing all over the place. I feared for the fate of my children's heads and my sliding glass door.

Will opened two presents from his stocking and decided he had better things to do. He's always been my guy that likes to do his own thing and shuns the popular decision. The rest of the family pressed onward. Marcus took on the duty of passing out gifts, a duty that he did independently thanks to the labels we made for our gifts.

The kids got their very own digital cameras. Hopefully this will avoid them stealing my camera all the time and putting their fingers on the lens making all my photos appear foggy like pretty much all of Christmas photos are.

Will was getting mad because he kept wanting to play with Marcus's toys, toys that often Will had gotten too but didn't know it since Marcus had opened all his gifts and Will had only opened two. When everyone was done with gifts, Will figured it was a good time to start opening his, like this sports magazine.

After lunch we headed north to spend the rest of the day with Greg's parents and sister. The kids got rested up in the car and were ready for more presents when we arrived. Will was well practiced and did a great job at keeping up with the gift unwrapping. Marcus took over cleaning up the wrapping paper as soon as he realized that once the paper was off the floor, it would be time to open another present.

We had a delicious holiday dinner that my mother-in-law cooked up. There was plenty of time to just be together as a family... and play with our new toys.