Chrismas 2008

Another beautiful Christmas. The kids had a fantastic morning, their energy and excitement was felt throughtout the house at an undesirable start time. Nicolas woke first at 6:03am, Madison was soon to follow and Evan straggled out of bed around 6:25am, the babies got up soon after. Grandma and Grandpa were snug in their bed at the Gainesville Hilton at that time, where they stay every time they are up to visit together. They came over just at 8am for the opening of presents and some yummy breakfast casserole, the presents were opened first. That hour and a half was brutal for the kids, and towards the end I thought Nicolas would actually explode from the temptation of the surprises in his pile-o-gifts. This year we tried to slow the onslaught of paper tearing and present inspecting down a bit, and while it worked, the morning still went too fast for me. The babies surprised me this year and actually "got it" and could open their own presents, the bigs helped out a bit too. It reminded me of Halloween, the babies would go to one house and get a piece of candy, and eat it without any interest in any other houses until that piece was completely eaten. Same with the presents, they would open one and play with it until they were "bored" and then move on to another. So cute! The bigs are still believers, not even a mention of any doubt this year, which we did have last year, very interesting. I love that magic! We all had a fairly relaxed and thoroughly wonderful morning, and the afternoon was pretty quiet, just played with the new stuff and hung around for some quality family time. It was nice. I am already looking forward to next year, I think it will be even better!