Christmas Day At Last

The kids woke up about 7 a.m. and came upstairs. The first thing they did, of course, is come upstairs to see if Santa came. We set a broom out every year to see if Santa comes. If it's knocked over in the morning, that means he came. If it's still standing, then that's bad news. Fortunately, it was knocked over.

Then we had to take one more picture of them in their cute pajamas, while prolonging their agony. They were dying to see what was in the living room.

We try to keep Christmas pretty low key in our home so that we focus on the true meaning of christmas. My kids know that Santa really only brings 1 big gift, and they also only really get 1 gift from mom and dad, plus PJs on christmas eve and an ornament. It doesn't sound like a lot, but by the time you add in all of the gifts from the cousins on both sides of the family, gifts from grandparents, and the ones from local friends, neighbors and teachers, it already seems like too much. This way, they don't have "too many" presents and actually enjoy opening all of their presents. Before we started doing Christmas this way, my kids didn't even want to open ALL of their presents. We practically had to force them, so this seems to be working for us for now. Below are pictures of some of the favorite presents this year:

Jacob got his first official pair of skis and broke them in the day after Christmas!

Aubrey got her first dollhouse!

And I think everyone's favorite toy (especially Evan's favorite) was this toy Elmo. It is amazing. It moves its arms and mouth when it talks, it stands up and sits down, dances, sings, tells jokes, tells stories, it laughs when you tickle it, and more. It's pretty cool and Evan almost died of excitement when he saw it.

Like I mentioned above, the rest of Christmas Day, we played with toys, went sledding outside with the neighbors, ate great food and relaxed. The rest of our Christmas vacation was spent doing pretty much the same, with a few occasional outings with local friends to restaurants and movies. It was pretty relaxing, which I thoroughly enjoyed!