The Hunter Family: Christmas Day 2010

My kids are awesome! Or maybe we are just terrible parents for letting them stay up so late on Christmas Eve. Either way, we had a great Christmas morning. I spent the first 6 years of my life as a parent waking up between 6 and 6:30 (sometimes earlier) with my kiddos. Isaac and Daphne were just early risers. It never mattered if they went to bed at 8 pm or midnight, they woke up at the same time. Sigh.
To be completely fair (both of them took nice, long afternoon naps until they were 5).
So, to have our sweet, little Victoria take after her dad and be a sleep-in kind of kid has been quite a change of pace! Of course, she's only been sleeping through the night since July, so it's not as if I've been lounging around in bed for the past 2 1/2 years, but it's definitely made a noticeable difference in my patience level! Isaac and Daphne learned how to sleep past 7 this year as well, which made Christmas morning delightful, if I do say so myself!

The kids woke up at 8, and I hopped out of bed and asked for 5 minutes to put in my contacts and ready the cameras, as they huddled at the top of the stairs excitedly exclaiming over how many more presents sat under the tree. Matt and I got all ready for our photo -ops and let them down the stairs. Isaac and Daphne ran straight to the tree, but Tori wanted only "my pretty chair and my liptstick block". If you read my last post, you know that she was using a wooden block for pretend make-up! Too cute.
She could not be lured away with shiny packages.
(Have I mentioned tha tI hate how my computer's "fix red-eye" feature sometimes gives us alien eyes? I guess that's better than red eyes, but it looks a little crazy.)

Seriously. This is her face when we tried to get her to leave her "pretty chair" to open the first gift of the morning:

Since she was less-than-enthusiastic about new gifts, we let the other kids give it a go. Here is Isaac opening his entire set of books from the Diary of A Wimpy Kid series. If you have a school-aged boy, this is a great series to get them interested in reading for pleasure. As much humor as Junie B. Jones but with less obnoxious potty talk than Captain Underpants.
Pretty good balance and he has been asking for it since September. Actually, he finally got the third book from the school library the week before Christmas and I actually hid it from him! That's probably a terrible Mommy confession. I wanted him to still want the series when he opened it Christmas morning instead of being like, "Oh Yeah, I read that last week." I know. I'm a terrible person. But it worked!

My Mom bought Daphne an Easy-Bake oven, which was so. sweet. Daphne has been begging for one since her birthday this summer.

Once she saw the other kids getting new stuff, we were able to lure Tori away from her vanity to open this set of wooden paper dolls. She loved it!

Have I mentioned how much my son likes Legos? Probably one of the best toys ever invented. If he's not playing video games, he's playing with his legos and he got a ton! You remember the huge set he received from Nanny and Papa the night before, right? Well he also got some Star Wars Legos from my grandmother:

and some Pirate legos from my sister, Aunt Shelli:

Then Daphne opened her big gift from Dad. I do most of the Christmas shopping, but Matt found this one for Daphne way back in September.

She's been asking for a camera for months. (Have you noticed a pattern of Daphne asking for things???) Matt found and awesome deal on this totally kid- appropriate media player. It plays music, video games, takes pictures, plays movies. Just perfect for our little soloist. She is almost always singing something, and she has a pretty great voice, if you ask her completely un-biased Mother. This is her face when she realized what it was:

We also got all of the kids their own fleecy blankets. This was two-fold in purpose. First of all, to eliminate fighting over the one soft blanket on the couch when it's time for Saturday morning cartoons. Secondly, Isaac has decided that he does not like to sleep under sheets, or a comforter or even the fuzzy velour blanket on his bed. He wants only a small, fleece camoflauge throw draped over him. We thought we would get him another one and hope that he would cover up!!!

Here is Tori with her kitty blanky:

My mom got Isaac this really cool ammo holder and extra ammo for all of his crazy nurf guns.

One of our traditions is buying an engraved ornament for the children every year. Last year we got them beautifully carved wooden ornaments from Germany, and this year we went back to silver, engraved ornaments. I forgot to get pics of the actual ornaments, but here they are hanging them:

After all that, it was time for the parents to open their gifts! First, Matt opened his present from Isaac. Isaac worked so hard at scouts and built him this tool box with wood and nails! Then, he and Daphne spent about 3 hours one afternoon painting it for him. (Daphne also painted him a super cute wooden butterfly, but I didn't get a good pic.):

Then, I got to open my present from Matt. There is a sort of sad story that goes along with this gift.... Back around Thanksgiving, Matt and I both purchased Christmas gifts for eachother. This is relatively monumental since we haven't bought Christmas gifts for one another in like, I don't know... 8 years or something? Anyway, independently of one another, we each bought gifts. I mentioned to him that I was super excited about his gift and he mentioned that he had gotten me something as well. 3 or 4 days later, one of Daphne's friends knocked on the door. I was busy talking to her and her mother, who pointed out that we had received a package. THIS package:

Unfortunately, it was shipped in this box, so when I bent down to pick it up and set it inside out of the snow... the first thing I saw was the huge print: SUNBEAM Bread Maker. AAAAHHHH!! It only took me about 2 seconds to figure out that this was my Christmas present. I felt terrible. (but a little bit excited , too!)

I knew that if this happened to me (as the gift-giver) I would be irate and completely and utterly disappointed. (I'm kinda famous for over-reacting)

Sooooo. I decided to play it cool. Here's what happened when Matt came home:

Chit-Chat. "How was your day?" and kisses and all that jazz.

Then, I casually say:

"You got a package today."

"I did?" he said (equally as casually). Then he finished telling me a story and said, " Oh, yeah. Don't open that package." And with a wink, he darted into the front room.

After about 30 seconds I heard, " Oh NO!"

Matt: "Laura?"

Me: "Mmm.hmmm?"

Matt: " Did you look at it?""

I thought for a sec...

Me: " Ummm. NO. I just brought it in from the porch." (completely innocently)

Matt: " You SAW IT!"

Me: "I'm sorry, honey!! I just brought it in from the porch and it's printed so big right there on the box!"

He walked around the corner with a sheepish expression and red cheeks. :(

I felt awful.

Matt: "You were going to lie to me?"

Me: " Oh. Honey. I just didn't want to ruin your surprise."

The expected exlamations ensued. He couldn't believe that they would ship it in the labeled box and I was trying to console him and thank him at the same time.

Definitely a bummer.

So, I decided to just pretend like that didn't happen. That's healthy, right?

I tried not to even mention it. I swrapped it and put it under the tree and then I opened it and acted as excited as a kidon Christmas morning! Alright, so it's all a little contrived, but I didn't want him to feel completely cheated and I was really excited!!

(I've already made several loaves of bread and I love it!!! I put all the ingredients in the night before and we wake up to fresh, healthy warm bread in the morning! SO. AWESOME! Thanks, Matt!)

After opening the gifts from eachother, we moved on to stockings. I think it is a bad sign that we often forget about the stockings. My children are probably incredibly spoiled. Anyway, Tori had a hard time putting down the candy she found on top to move on to any of the other goodies inside!

Daphne, took the approach more closely aligned to the philosophy of instant gratification:

I would like to give a little shout-out to Matt's Auntie Val, who cross-stiched all of my children's stockings by hand. They are absolutely gorgeous and I LOVE them!!!!)

After the present-opening extravaganza, we had some deliciously yummy cinnamon rolls together. I wish I had taken pictures of that scene. My kids couldn't wipe the smiles off their faces and as we sat down to the table, Daphne was exclaiming over her loot and then stopped to look at me very seriously. "You know, Mom, it's not about what you get, it's about what Jesus gave to you!" Isaac chimed in talking about how we give gifts to eachother to remember what an amazing gift Jesus was to us.

And after that, I couldn't wipe the smile off of my face! What more could a Mom ask for on Christmas morning?

Isaac went straight up to his room and began putting together all 3, 000 of his new lego pieces.

Matt was on-call for work that weekend, so he had to go into the office for a few hours.

Daphne, Tori and I all took a nap.

Perfect.

Later that afternoon, we headed back over to the Hunters for round 2 of Christmas celebrations!