Christmas morning as a parent is so much different than it is as a kid, and it seems like this year we got the whole experience. We got the kids gifts that required some assembly, so Christmas morning required more than one late night putting things together so we wouldn’t have to do it with an excited kid waiting. Thinking about their reactions when they saw their new toys made all the secrets and hiding of gifts worth it. We really enjoyed shopping for their gifts, wrapping them while watching Christmas movies, making sure to hide them in just the right way so Santa would still be mysterious, and then deciding the perfect way to arrange all the gifts under the tree.
Since the girls’ room is right off the living room, it proved a little more challenging to surprise them in the morning. We warned them the night before that they were not allowed to come out of their room until we came to get them—not even to go to the bathroom. They are really pretty good about obeying that rule. Andrew’s room is a little farther down the hall, so we weren’t sure how to get them all to come out at the same time. We let him wait right at the corner, then called for them to come out (after I’d gone in to get Abigail out of her crib). They seemed amazed that Santa had really come—although we’d been talking about it for days.
Abigail seemed to know right away that this was her rocking horse and wasted no time getting on him. Her other big gifts were a baby doll with a carrier (she loves to put babies in her high chair to “feed” them, so now the babies have their own chair), and some foam blocks. Love the expression I caught when she opened the blocks!
Leah’s big gift was the Barbie Dreamhouse. It’s all she talked about since she saw it on TV months ago. It is the only thing she asked Santa for. This thing is HUGE—about as tall as she is, has 3 floors, 2 elevators (one for fashion), a working toilet & hair dryer, and tons of seating. The house is nicer than our own house! :-) Of course Abigail loves throwing all the little pieces all over the place but mostly she loves pushing the button to flush the potty. Leah hasn’t played with it as much as we thought, but then we put it downstairs and haven’t really spent much time down there since then. Her other big gift was a “Journey Girl” doll, which is a life-like looking doll that you can buy clothes and accessories for. She also got a backpack in which to carry the doll to sleepovers or wherever. She was really surprised and not expecting this, although she mentioned a few weeks ago that a friend of hers’ had one like it. She has carried it around non-stop since Christmas morning.
Andrew got a table on which to put the wooden train he already has. It also came with a few more track pieces and accessories. Unfortunately it’s not really big enough to build some of the tracks he likes to build, but he still enjoys that it’s off the ground and plays with it a lot. We also found an inexpensive electric train that goes by itself on a track which was set up around the table. He now likes to let it ride around off the track and run into people.He also asked for Lightning McQueen, although we weren’t really sure what he meant. I think he wanted one he could ride in, but he got a small one for the bath and another smaller matchbox-type one. We also got him a loop race track that propels cars to race them, but then Aunt Karen got him another one that hangs on the wall and shoots the cars out at ridiculously fast speeds so they can go around a huge 3 foot loop. That one was by far the biggest hit and all 3 kids love playing with that!
We thought we might get a white Christmas seeing as how we’re in Vermont now, but it was actually sunny and about 45 degrees and has been all week. That little blob of snow in the middle of the big patch of grass in this picture? That’s our igloo. Melted into a puddle. It was nice to have sun, but it would have been fun to try out our new snow tubes on Christmas day.
The rest of the day was spent just playing together with new stuff, munching for lunch and enjoying a nice ham dinner. We played 2 new games, we played Barbies and car races, we watched a parade and some Christmas movies on TV, and enjoyed each other’s company.
We got a video of their first reaction to what Santa brought. They were in awe.
And some more videos of the unwrapping!
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