Our first Christmas gift today was our blessed little angels sleeping until past 7 am. This was really quite a surprise as they've been pretty excited. Teia in particular has been all about Christmas and has been wearing Christmas headgear pretty much all of December.
Teia woke first, in bed with us as has been her habit of late. She wanted to know if Santa had arrived, scampered to the living room and returned with the proof: an empty plate of cookies and one piece of nibbled on carrot. Somehow the fat stockings and piles of presents under the tree had escaped her notice. A few minutes later Kai arrived in our room and the excitement level went waaaaay up, particularly since Teia had declared that we'd be opening presents "as a fam-i-ly" which meant she was happy Kai was not going to be keeping her waiting with one of his legendary sleep ins.
We did stockings first and the kids were thrilled to find new jammies stuffed in there and promptly changed into them.
Then the rip and tear began. Kai was really hoping for a lego airplane set and was reading labels on all the boxes large enough to possibly contain his gift. About 2 gifts in, he was in luck. He immediately opened the box and started to pull out the bags of Lego and began to open those, spewing some of the 658 pieces on the floor. His plan, to build that Lego airplane, right then and there. Somehow we were able to distract him and get him to back to opening gifts. Teia had a strong lead and we were worried she'd be finished about 3 days before Kai, as usual. Luckily she got distracted by the assembly of her My Little Pony palace and Kai was able to make up some ground.
The kids were solidly spoiled as usual by family, friends and Santa. Teia's stuffed animal collection multiplied. Santa brought her a leash and a comfy pet bed and she spent the next hour leashing and dragging her dinosaurs, cats, dogs, seals and anything else with a plush neck that could be leashed around the living room, then putting them down to nap in the comfy little bed. She even tried it out for herself but found she was a little too large. Kai's airplane collection also expanded and he got a good start on his new Magic School bus DVD and book collection. Santa didn't forget mom and dad either, the dear fellow.
It was a summery day in San Diego so we spent a quick hour at the beach. It seemed like just any other day at the beach except for the couple of people surfing in Santa hats and two wahine surfers wearing mu'u mu'us wrapped in tinsel over their wetsuits. And this guy....
Post beach-time we prepped Christmas dinner and then spent a lovely evening with our dear Haligonian friends who are visiting (this refers to people from Halifax, not people suffering from chronic onion breath as the name might otherwise suggest - especially if you spell it Hali-g-onion). There was another mad flurry of gift opening and a delicious dinner that the parents eventually sat down to after begging, threatening, negotiating, and strong arming some dinner into the kids (except for Harry who does a very impressive Fred Flintstone at the dinner table and can really wield a turkey leg - I'm a little disappointed I didn't get a photo of that).
Our children feel entirely differently about dessert though. We served our usual Christmas day dessert fare of chocolate mousse. After polishing off his portion, Kai asked "who wants more dessert?" This was an entirely rhetorical question he was asking himself in the hopes that someone would provide him with another bowl of mousse. The mousse was yummy and served with fresh whipped cream this year instead of canned whipped cream. This was my idea as I'm trying to get as many preservatives out of our diet as possible. Greg loves his whipped cream. Like really loves it. So he wanted to make sure it was perfect and even chilled the mixers and mixing bowl before preparing it. He grumbled about all the effort but I think even he agreed, it tasted better in the end.
Bedtime wasn't without its challenges, not too surprising after such a sugar and excitement filled day. But the kids were pretty tickled with their new alarm clocks that projected pictures and the time onto their ceilings. I asked each of them what was their favorite part of the day. Kai said he liked receiving his Lego airplane best of all. Teia chose her alarm clock, sleeping in bed with Mommy and Daddy and "the fam-i-ly" as her favorite parts of the day. Awwwww.....I love Christmas....now that clean up that awaits us in a week or so, not so much. But we won't think about that quite yet.
Merry Christmas to All and to All a Good Night!
1 comment:
That's what Christmas is all about: building memories and your own family traditions. Wish we could have been there.
Love,
Mom and Mike
Post a Comment