Christmas 2012

It all started at 3:40 a.m., when a child, that I shall refer to as, little P, comes bounding into our room..

"Hey daddy, momma says to come wake you up when we were awake. I'm awake. So, can we go open presents?"

From my right side, I hear the low mumblings from Big P, telling little P, to high-tail it back to bed. 

Then somewhere between 3:40 and 4:00 a.m., Big P leaves bed, and leaves Big G alone. 

THEN, maybe 4:15? Little H, comes to big G.

"Momma, can we go open presents?!"

UH NO.

At which point, little H, high tails it to Neena's bed. I'm sure with the intention to butter Neena up out of that bed. 

After several rounds of musical beds, and mad parents forcing our children to sleep, "UNTIL AT LEAST 6", we finally gave in.

And the moment the kid-year revolves around, finally came. 

The time to finally see what you scored for Christmas.

And as a parent, this is sort of our time too.

We get to see how excited they get!

And so it was, Christmas 2012, was on....

The gifts

The tearing of paper

Getting just EXACTLY what you asked for

Well, at least just part of it....

Because, this was just a portion of our Christmas, the rest was still to come.

In kid-time, our Christmas day is long, but in adult-time, it's perfect, because it gives us time to catch a snooze. A much needed snooze.

Actually only some of us could snooze, the rest of us had things to do! Like, get the table ready!

It was set, the food was prepared, and now we waited for everyone to show up.

And lemme tell you, about the first one to show up.

This here, is my Aunt Linda. She taught third grade for 40 years, and well, she's a hoot! You just NEVER know what she might show up dressed like, and this year it was this....

Hope especially thought this was amazing.

And she stayed like this ALL DAY.

Insert meal, laughter, tons of twitter talk (which btw, about half the family signed up for twitter yesterday) teenage tips for me on how to stay relevant, and just general food related discomfort.

And now a little fact about my mom.

Once the meal is complete, we must clean up, there's no leaving the dishes. I have no problem with that, but guess who was DYING.

Going on 1:00, and these two were doing their best to kill time...

But their perseverance was about to pay off.

BECAUSE IT WAS TIME. 

Come on down kids!

The gift areas are always off limits until it's actually time!

I must say, Pierce was a little reserved this year. I guess his age is catching up with him.

Excited, but reserved.

And I even noticed that Hope seemed some embarrassed at times. What's that all about?

But once all of us started to dig in I think that helped.

So much fun!

All the hours and dollars spent

Finally come down to this!

This could not be more true.

Here's a funny thing.

My mom likes to listen to her radio shows during the day, she generally listens to them when she driving around, but then once she's home she wants to finish listening to them at the house.

My dad has his house all set up with Bose system, etc., and he of course is also an Apple genius, and can get my mom set up with anything, but she refuses all that. What does she want? A transistor radio.

And yesterday, she finally got it. My dad is hanging his head, in Apple shame, but she loves it, so there you go!

Such a fun day!

With the occasional time-out to wrestle

Or wardrobe change.

Speaking of wardrobe! Jo and I are still not too old to get matching clothes!

And once the last thing was opened, it was finally time to just sit back and just play.

My mom has always done an amazing job at Christmas, and I know it's a lot of work, so thank you mom.

 Christmas 2012.