Christmas Morning at home

After a LONG night of putting gifts together, getting batteries in toys and last minute wrapping we finally got to sleep around 1 am. We still haven’t quite decided if we’re going to do the whole Santa thing or not with the kids. We want to, but at the same time don’t want to make it a huge deal because we want them to know what the real and true meaning of Christmas is. We never really told Riley about Santa this year or said “Santa’s watching, so you better be good…”, etc. We’ve got another year to decide what we’re going to do, but this year gifts were from Mommy and Daddy.

We woke up (when I say “we”, I mean the kids…I would have slept in until 9:00 if it were up to me), bright and early at 7:30 am. Riley and Lincoln actually woke up within minutes of each other so it worked out perfectly. We have a tradition we started when Riley was a newborn. We get the kids a new pair of jammies and they open them on Christmas Eve so they wake up on Christmas with a new pair on. Anyways…we woke up and the first thing Riley saw was the Rose Petal Cottage all put together–it was love at first sight. She almost didn’t care to open anything because she just wanted to play in the house!! But we coaxed her into opening the rest of her gifts. She thought she was in heaven because she got to open almost all the presents. Lincoln obviously can’t, so she thought ALL the gifts were for her. She was so funny and we loved seeing the look on her face when she opened her gifts. Lincoln didn’t care much, but did enjoy playing with the wrapping paper that was all over the place. This year we had a lot of fun shopping for them–especially for Riley.

Some of the things we got Riley this year were:

1. Rose Petal Cottage: LOVES IT!

2. Rose Petal Cottage lounge chair: LOVES IT!

3. Rose Petal Cottage sink and washer: LOVES IT (and hides everything in the washer: Jennie, I found your missing tissues in it :))

4. Elmo Live!: (LOVES IT)

5. Mega bloks piano: Likes it when she watches Elmo on TV. Elmo plays a song in most episodes on his piano, so she plays it on her new piano.

6.2 Elmo videos: LOVES them, of course!

7.LOTS of Gap clothes :): She threw the clothes aside and went to the next gift :).

8. Bath crayons, letters, water-color changing things: Loves them all, but especially loves the letters and crayons. I’m teaching her to recognize the letters now that she knows her alphabet.

9. new sippys

10. Baby Alive learns to potty doll: Likes playing with it, but is probably a little too young for it. I was thinking it would be good for potty training, but I think she’ll like it when she’s older.

11.Graco baby “accessories”: came with a stroller, high chair, car seat, etc: Haven’t even opened it yet…maybe we got her too many things??!!

12.Aquadoodle: Loves everything aquadoodle.

13.Random stocking stuffers

Lincoln got:

1. Crawl and Cruise musical jungle

2. Busy Ball popper

3. lots of new nippers

4. Tad

5. Fisher Price Deluxe jumperoo

6. Random stocking stuffers

7. Mega Bloks musical piano (it was to Lincoln and Riley)

8. CLOTHES Galore!

9. a few more things, I just can’t think right now….

We totally know it’s not about the presents, but man it’s fun to watch them open gifts and see their sweet smiles when they’ve gotten somthing they love! After all gifts were opened I’d usually make a big breakfast, but we were rushing to be out of the house by 10:00am to go to my Grandparents in Allegan…