the jolly man made it!

Christmas morning was a bit different this year. For the last 12 years I have been the one to wake up my children. It started when Alec wasn't even one, and every single year since, I have gone into their room or upstairs to wake them up with the video camera in their face at about 5:00 or 5:30 a.m. (maybe earlier once!) This year I decided (or Alec may have decided) that I was robbing something from his childhood. The waking up sneaking to the tree, or waking us up and us yelling at them to go back to bed, or the parents making a trap with pots and pans or string to catch the kids sneaking a peak (it never worked for my dad), or their first vision of presents from Santa with clear eyes, instead of light in the eyes from my video camera. OK. Whatever. I left them in charge.

They all sleep upstairs together which I love, and they all came down at 5:30 am. We did the 'go back to sleep for an hour' thing and with no argument they went right back upstairs for one hour. What. No complaining. No whining. No PLEEEAAASSSE can we open right now???? Amazing. I was almost disappointed, until I slept. Then one hour later, they came back in and I jumped up!

Magic had happened....

Santa managed a three year old's wish to get Hungry, Hungry Hippos! Unbelievable!
Savvy got her Nintendo DS with the Build a Bear game. Unbelievable.

Because of the love he promised to give, Carter got the long sleeved, Manchester United, Christiano Ranoldo Jersey. He wants to frame it for his room. Silly boy. Still... Unbelievable.

Alec was surprised with an iPod classic. I guess I am suppose to say it was 160 GB because that makes it cooler. I have no idea about gigga bites (see I can't even spell it), all I know is that the picture on that thing is better than my TV! Unbelievable!

They had so much fun for that 30 minutes it takes to open all the presents!

In years past, we immediately head up to Mimi and Papa's house at around 6:00 in the morning. We decided this year to actually let them play with their presents and stay home until it was time for breakfast burritos at my mom and dad's house. Good thing because you all saw how CRAZY that snow storm was. We were lucky to make it our of our neighborhood!! We spent a lot of time at my mom's digging cars out of the snow, and shoveling their driveway. So thankful for Four Wheel Drive. Some of the houses out here were so covered in snow you couldn't tell what color the brick on their house was. I wish I would have gotten a picture of the front of our house when we left. But I did get this one of the backyard with the snow all the way up the fence. What a white Christmas! This was Jer and I after the major dig out!

Two Twins - Talkin' Sports!

After my mom's we made the trek up to Sandy. So surprising that it was nothing like it was out here. You could still see the bushes outside and it had hardly snowed. Until we left of course! Lukie was in heaven when he got to open his 'Spirit' horse. He really did have a great day!

We had dinner and played 'words in a bowl' (girls won - thanks Savvy) until it was time to make the trek home again. Just in time for the snow to fall on us once again and make Christmas even better.

I am in love with Christmas and everything that goes with it....except for...

sooooo annoying!!!!! I can't even BELIEVE how many of these stupid wires we took off of the most ridiculous toys!! Can't anyone think of something better?

Hope yours was as magical as ours!