Xmas Summary, because no one wants to see all that red-eye!

Okay, I'm going to make this short because only a Mommy & Daddy can enjoy looking at pictures of people opening gifts(and then only if those people are loved ones). To everyone else it is boring. I tried to hit on the high points with the pictures I've chosen but the 12 I am posting are not all of the pictures I have of the big day. I am, however, using them as reference so I can get the general gift list right.

I have to start with Xmas Eve as we gave the children our traditional gift then as well as a second gift that I figured would be better set up before the business of Xmas day itself. Our traditional gift is pajamas and sometimes a little extra gift(this way everyone looks nice in Xmas morning pictures). This year we did jammies and a book. A also got a little bag of plastic soldiers and M's book came with a necklace. The children's other gift was individual computer desks - I had been telling them for over a week that I had bought them cages. When J and I went down into the basement to set them up I sent the empty boxes upstiars to the kids with this label taped to them:
I went on with a back story that caging kids was a new parenting method and that I bought the cages from the people that ran the website that was talking about this new parenting trend. I told them as soon as Daddy and I were done setting them up we would let them try them out. A figured it out but the girls(especially M) were almost fooled.

Their reactions were wonderful, I think there is relief in those smiles:

Of course everyone was happy with their new jammies as well and were happy to show them off to the camera for me:

Here is a shot of our tree with all the goodies:

Me on Xmas morning, I insisted on this shot because my dog has her head on my ankles and I thought that was sweet:
Yes it's still dark outside but is around 7am. I'm not going to list everything everyone got because that's silly. I think my best gift was the new camera J got me, J got 6 new t-shirts from me but he thinks his best gift was the Percy Jackson and the Olympians book set I got him, K's fave gift was probably the cash she got, A's is either the DS or the Lego Star Wars PC game we got him, M has gotten the most use out of her Littlest Pet Shop play set and I think Mom liked the pictures of the kids we gave her.

The kids lined up for the first gift of the day:I had just said, "You're lined up like three little soldiers." what hams I have!

A has, by far, the biggest reactions to everything, he was shocked to get a DS of his very own:
But nothing beats getting something you really wanted but didn't think Mommy & Daddy could find:He went right downstairs to install it and play for a while!

Even Mom's Shi Tzu was into the Xmas spirit:

That's it. Using our 'one gift each and then take a break' method we managed to keep the gift giving going until noon. This is really good since the kids only had 4 gifts each to open. It was a great day and well worth telling you all about!

Cass :)