Twas the Morning Before Christmas..

This Christmas was a little different from other years in that our plans were to travel early Christmas morning to the farm.  When I say early, I mean our flight out left at around 1AM.  That's right.  1AM Christmas morning! 

Let me back up just a bit.  My point is, in order to accommodate our own Christmas morning rituals and gift opening to avoid having to ship everything to the farm and then subsequently, have to ship it all back, we had our "Christmas" morning on the morning of Christmas Eve.  LW slept over that night which always makes me unusually happy.  Although to protect my evil-stepmom rep, I'll deny that to my dying breath.

Having my whole family under the same roof at the same time is a rarity these days, and likely to become more so as LW exits college and enters the real world, and GG exits high school and enters college.  Wait.. wait.. it's all going too fast.. someone stop this train!!!  LW had work Christmas Eve day so she slept over to allow us enough time to open gifts, appropriately oooh and ahhh over what we each got and just enjoy being a family for a few hours.

The morning started out EARLY.  Bug and Bunny came racing into our room at the crack of 6:30.  The sun was barely up.  Knowing the time limit we were on, we allowed them to "wake us up" instead of grumbling to them about it being too early and sending them back to their room to play until a more reasonable hour, which is what we usually do.  Instead, we wickedly sent them to wake their sisters.  There's nothing like two squealing little kids jumping on their older siblings to start the day out right.  Well, the day started out right for us at any rate.

The Hubs started some much needed coffee and I made a miserable cup of decaf for myself. (Have I mentioned I can't have caffeine?  Have I mentioned how sad and miserable that makes me?)  And even with a steady stream of caffeinated coffee at their disposal, some of us were more awake than others.

Then The Hubs played "Santa" and passed out gifts a little at a time to each of us.  Notably, the Bug and Bunny had WAY more gifts than the rest of us.  Like every year we try to budget the same amount for gifts for each child, but while Bug and Bunny usually end up getting more gifts they typically get less money overall spent on them. Some of this is due to my amazing discount shopping skillz.  But mostly it's because LW and GG are old enough to want the truly expensive stuff. 

This meant that when the wrapping paper settled, the piles around the little kids...

was a considerably larger than the piles surrounding each of the older girls..

The Tweedles made out like bandits.

From Sand Toys to movies (Lion King II)...

To Dora The Explorer Pals Dolls (if you look closely, please notice that I accidentally left the sales price tag on $3 and some change thank you very much!)...

To dragons that move and make noise!

The older girls each got a few little gifts from us along with the homemade gifts from their siblings.  For their "BIG" gift this year, GG got this lovely camera to replace the one that got stolen from school last year.

It's a Fuji Fine pix 14 Megapixel digital camera.  Not too shabby.

And LW got this lovely image imparting her gift.

It reads:
Archery Bow
because when the apocolypse comes,
you'll need to be prepared.

I may have mentioned our family's preoccupation with archery a few times on here.  Now LW will have her very own bow which hopefully will improve her scores now that she's not using the worn out ones they lend.  And the whole apocalypse thing has turned into a bit of an inside family thing.  I'll explain that someday.. maybe.. 

The Hubs got this amazing Whiskey Stone Set 

They're suppose to make your drinks cold like ice, but without watering down your drink like ice would.  And the glasses are pretty neat-o too.

But I do believe I got the very best gift of all.

The Hubs reads my blog after all!

Seriously.. Thoughts?