Waking them up

Christmas morning we had a breakfast to go to at my parents and we wanted to open presents at our house first so we had to wake the kids up and Russ' parents came over to watch.

You can see the blanket lines on Gracie's face
I wanted a picture of them before they saw the presents, but Gracie just wanted to be held.

Here is William crawling in to see his gifts.

Opening his gift from Santa.

And he got what he wanted - Superman Jammies with a Superman cape But the cape on the back of the Jammies was weak so he also got a handmade one from me (made by Gma H) Here he is, as he puts it, filling up his cape. Basically making sure it flies behind him.

Here is Gracie inspecting her box from Santa. She was not interested in opening presents, but she was interested in them once they were out of the package.

Santa brought her some pretty necklaces.Then William opened the cake mommy made him... ...that came complete with a rotating cake stand that lights up and sings Happy Birthday. They both love it, and I knew they would.For Russ I finally finished the t-shirt quilt I started making him when we first got married. He also gets to buy himself a new GPS watch for running.
Gracie also got a shiny purple ball

and a little baby she can carry around anywhere.

Here she is trying to play with the cake and the ball at the same time.Then they opened the big present. The Kitchen! Apparently the fridge needed more than 2 coats of spray paint primer and 2 coats of spray paint. Arrggghh! Maybe we will repaint it, maybe we won't. But I did like my "wallpapering" job. Just scrapbook paper.I will have to take some better pics of this some time. Checking to make sure Santa got his cookies and milk.

Cooking up her pacifier.

Gracie's wooden elephant that was not hand made by me, but obviously hand made and purchased second hand.

Check out these cute Santa suckers from Gma and Gpa C.

Gracie and her sweet new slippers from Gma and Gpa C.

Santa only brings one present to each child and there are a few reasons for that:

1. I try my hardest not to get myself caught up in traditions that I won't be able to keep up if and when we have more kids or lets say something terrible happens like the economy fails.

2. I don't want all the credit for my hard work and thoughtfulness to go to some imaginary guy in a red suit. Besides William asked me flat out if Santa was real and I asked him what he thought and he said, "yes" so I said, "yes" and I feel guilty about it. If the subject comes up again he will probably know the truth.

3. With Christmas I think less is more. William asked for one thing from Santa and he got one thing and it made it simple and real(like). I don't like it when kids open a present, look at it, and then start looking for the next one to open. If they have a ton to open the don't even care about the ones they just opened. When William opened his gift from Santa he changed clothes and ran around for awhile before he came back for more and I love that.