Christmas Day

     As usual, Carson was the first one up Christmas morning.  It has become tradition that he climbs into bed with us and watches a movie while Mike and I try to a few more minutes of sleep before the other kids wake up. There have been years where he almost gets through an entire movie before another child wakes up (I don't know how we got so lucky, but are kids usually sleep until a decent hour on Christmas morning), but this year it was only a few minutes before Mason and Abby appeared also.  I always go downstairs first and plug in all the lights and get the camera ready while Mike lines the kids up in age order on the stairs to come down.  Since Elliot was still asleep (he usually is one of the first kids up, but all the activities from the previous two days must have wiped him out) Mason was the first one down the stairs. 

And then came the big kids.

     Santa left a note and some cookie chunks.  Mason was quite concerned that Santa didn't eat every last bite of cookie, but I told him he was probably just full.  I mean, it is quite possible that he had a delicious and large meal before starting his deliveries and that he had been eating many Christmas treats, and that three sugar cookies is a lot to eat.
      Or, as Abby pointed out maybe he had just ate all the cookies all the other kids left out and was feeling full. That explanation works also.

Mason was excited about his tent and spent the next week sleeping in it almost every night.

Abby (and her dolls) were excited about their tent.

I'm not sure who thought Carson's gift was cooler; the little boy or the big boy.  Mike loves Legos as much as the kids (in fact one of my gifts to Mike was Lego set).   The kids enjoyed their presents from Santa while we waited for Elliot to wake up.  E is known for taking a little while to warm up in the morning (don't mess with him before he's had a sippy cup of cold milk and some oatmeal) so I wasn't sure what he would think of jumping right into the festivities, but the pull of a new dump truck was stronger than the pull of the oatmeal and he was pretty excited.

He had left the gifts wrapped under the tree completely alone in the weeks leading up to Christmas, but once we started getting the hang of unwrapping he tried to unwrap everyone's gifts.

When Abby heard that I got Mason a bathrobe for Christmas she said, "He is going to love that!  He has been waiting his whole life for that!"  He was pretty excited about it.  Both the older kids have one and I hadn't realized how much Mason wanted one.

 Elliot got two new board books from Mike and I and wanted to read each of them immediately after opening them.

 New Ninja suit from Great Grandma N.  I love that this kids two favorite things are such opposites::  Winnie the Pooh and ninjas.

A few days before Christmas I went to a girlfriends Christmas party that had a while elephant gift exchange.  One of the hot item gifts was Poopurri, something I had never heard of before, but that I knew Mike would think was hilarious.  I tried to steal it during the game so that I could use it as a stocking stuffer, and unfortunately got it stolen from me, but my friend told me of a store nearby that sold it.  The store even sold a set in "manly" packaging which made the gift even more funny.   Mike's face when he opened it was great and the you tube video of the commercial was watched multiple times during the holidays as we told various family members about it.

 One of my favorite parts of Christmas morning is watching the kids exchange their gifts with each other.

 Carson used the gift card he had won to buy his siblings gifts this year and he was very thoughtful and generous about what he picked out for them. 
Mason loved the Winnie the Pooh night light that Abby picked out for him.

 Mason was very into wrapping presents this year.  As in, he asked me multiple times a day if he could wrap more Christmas gifts.  He wrapped up several things for his siblings including old toys and cards he had made for them.  Most of these I knew about or had helped him wrap, but on his own one day he wrapped something for Mike and I and I  honestly had no idea what it was.  When we opened it up, we found one of the straps to Mason's sleeping bag that velcros to hold it in place when it is rolled up that had broken off.  It was wrapped in one of his Lego storage boxes.  At first I was very touched that he would wrap up his Lego Ninja storage box since he really likes it.  When Mike asked him if he wanted us to share the storage box with him, he replied, "No the present is just the sleeping bag thing!"  So, Mason gave Mike and I a piece that broke off his sleeping bag (the blue thing in Mike's hand).  Whenever something meets Masons standards, he gives a thumbs up and says, "Okay, perfect."  Here we are giving the Mason "perfect" pose.


Another perfect pose with the ornament I helped Mason make for Mike.

     At 10:00, my parents, Mat, Mike, Paula, and Baby Mikey came over so that we could all Skype with Marcus.  This turned into a little bit of a stressful event when it turned out that Xbox Live (which is what we were going to use to Skype with) had been hacked into and was down.  It ended up being down for most of Christmas day.   We ended up just skyping on the laptop in the office and it was fine, but the half hour leading up to up was a little tense hoping everything would work right.  Next year will be our first Christmas in four years without a Christmas skype from a missionary and I think we are all looking forward to having everyone home and not having to worry about internet connections and frozen missionaries (meaning their picture is frozen on the screen although they have both served in some cold places) half way across the world.  

      After my family left, we built Legos and got ready to go to Mike's parents.  My mother in law had prepared a beautiful and delicious meal and we enjoyed eating, visiting, and exchanging gifts.

I love this picture of Mike's dad looking at the photo book Kari and I made for the grandparents of all their grandkids with letters they wrote in the back.

Mike's brother got him summer sausage and cheese.  Mike and I have many similarities, but when it comes to food we are very different.  Summer sausage?  I can't even begin to imagine how that looks appetizing...

The two curly towheaded cousins.  From the back these two look like siblings.  Mason had picked out Lila's gift and then spent a good half an hour wrapping it all by himself so we had to get a picture of it.

We headed up that evening and had a evening snack of crackers, cheese, turkey, and apples while we watched "The Santa Claus 2" and built Legos.  It was a wonderful Christmas.