Christmas Day 2

Of course when it comes to Christmas day 1 blends in to day 2.  When we got home the night of Christmas Eve we got Alyce all gigged up for Santa.  We got the Santa's Cookies plate out, added a few cookies, and a mug of milk.  While I was putting Alyce to bed she all of the sudden came down with a serious look on her face.  I asked her what the problem was and she asked how Santa was going to get in the house.  She went on to say that he couldn't come down the chimney as our TV table was in front of the doors.  I told her that I would move the table away from the wall to make room.  That must have been a good enough solution as she rolled over and went to sleep.

 Christmas morning Alyce and Luke were greeted by a stack of presents.  There were some presents from Mom and I and some presents from Santa.  Alyce's big present was a treasure chest full of dress up clothes and jewelery.  Luke's big present was a Little People Wheelie car play set.  The car play set was the big winner of the year.  Since opening it Alyce, Luke, Mom, and myself have all played with it.  After opening all of the presents the kids got to play for a little while and then we loaded them up into the car for breakfast and presents at Grams and Papas.

Presents and breakfast at Grams and Papa's house was a lot of fun.  Chris's half brother Joe and Gigi were there.  Alyce's favorite present was a tea party set and Luke's was a set of Fisher Price gears.  After breakfast we hung out until it was time to get the kids home for naps and quiet time.  We had to head out to Onermark Grams later that night and Luke needed all the sleep he could get.

We wanted to get out to my mother's house before the larger family party started so we could exchange presents.  However Luke didn't cooperate and we didn't get out there until just before the other guests showed up.  The next few hours was chaos.  Tables had to be moved and chairs set up to handle the influx of parents and children.  Alyce and Luke both had a great time playing with their cousins.  All of the kids are within 3 years of each other and even though they aren't old enough to be left to their own devices in the basement they were able to sneak away here and there to get in to a bit of trouble.

The best part of the Christmas party with my family is the white elephant gift exchange.  This year created a new wrinkle in that the kids wanted to "help" open all of the presents.  And even though we allowed Alyce to help with ours she wanted to help everyone and we had to keep telling her no.  This led to an unhappy little girl but luckily it never hit a full on tantrum.

After the party was over and the guests went home we futilely tried to do our immediate family gift exchange.  I thought we could get all of the presents opened even though it was way way past the kids bedtime.  I thought wrong.  We got a few open but quickly it degenerated into madness.  Instead we decided to call it a night and come back out the next day to finish the presents.