'Twas The Night Before Christmas ...

...When all thru the house not a creature was stirring not even the diabolically intelligent mouse ... the monkeys were tucked all snug in their beds while visions of gifts dance in their heads ... me in the basement and J in the kitchen I settled in for a long evening Sim ...

Okay so it doesn't rhyme but 'tis close to the truth. The kids are settled and J is setting up his baked beans(they'll cook all night). I'm not going to Sim though, I'm tired and want to go to bed - I have 4 gifts to open tomorrow and after moving them upstairs and having a preliminary shake of them I have no idea what they are(although one may be a sewing machine...I'd like that, no really I would!). J knows I like to try to guess my gifts just before I open them so he sabotages at least one of them so I'll never guess in a million years what it is. One year he put cat bell balls in my gift and I couldn't figure out for the life of me what it was!

We do have a very smart mouse in the house right now, he keeps jumping out of the kitchen garbage at us ... we almost caught him today but he ran away before I grabbed him. He is totally ignoring the mousetrap. I'm thinking of getting this to trap him and then I'll carry him off somewhere and he can feed a stray cat or something. All our cat does is lurk in the kitchen looking foolish.

The kids were happy with their traditional Christmas Eve gift of new pajamas even though A was grumbling about it earlier today. K's has the grumpy Care Bear on it and it says "Seriously Grumpy" she thought it was very funny! A got skateboard pajamas with camouflage shorts and M got a set that says "Pretty Ballerina" on them. We got them many other gifts as well ... well not many many. A & M each have 7 gifts each and K has 6(she's harder to buy for), I have 4 and J has 3.

I will attempt to drag out gift opening as much as I can, as usual, and the first gift the kids will get are their stockings on their beds. Then I'll have A&M open their most boring gifts first - new sheets and a new blanket each. Then I'll have K open the gift to the three of them - the Shrek 3 movie. We'll all watch the movie before we open any more gifts. I'm sure you'll hear the kids screaming from where you all are :) I figure with a gift every 1/2 hour or so after that I'll be able to drag out gift opening for about 5 hours :) So far this plan has served me well every other year. Open a gift, explore the gift, repeat. We don't' give the kids tons of stuff but other than the bedding it's all pretty great stuff ... at least J & I hope they will think so.

Wishing all of you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from my family to yours.

Cass :)