Life Lessons

Christmas has come and gone for another year. All of the packages have been ripped open. All of the stuffed animals have been freed from their nasty wire twist tied boxes. And all of the required assembly has been completed. I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas Day.

This year, our Christmas Day got a later start thanks to Number One Son sleeping in until 8:30am. A Christmas Miracle! That was thanks to a late Christmas Eve church service. After church we let the kids open one gift before bed. They each opened new pajamas and slippers. Our kids are still at the age when cool pj's are an excitable gift. When Sweet Pea saw her 'Hello Kitty' slippers she gasped, "These are just what I've always wanted!"

They each also received new robes. Sweet Pea opened hers first and offered her old robe with the snowflakes on it to her brother. These turned out to be good gifts because they both were excited to go to bed with their new pj's.

The next morning, N1S, Lady Di and myself came downstairs and turned on the television to the Yule Log channel and waited for Sweet Pea to come downstairs before inspecting our Christmas stockings. At 9:30am N1S was sent up to check on (wake up) his sister. Sweet Pea came down and saw the empty snack plate and the note from Santa and went straight to her stocking.

She got some hair pretties and a Littlest Pet Shop TV game. "(Gasp), This is just what I always wanted!", she exclaimed. She got a lot of things she's always wanted.

N1S got some Star Wars playing cards from Santa and immediately wanted to play Star Wars black jack.

After the stockings were ripped inside out, it was time for the real fun. "Who wants to play Santa?"

"I do!", yelled Sweet Pea. And off she ran to pass out gifts. Number One Son had to go with her to read the tags, otherwise all of the gifts would make it to her pile. After a few trips of SP racing in and out of the room, tossing our gifts too us (luckily we don't gift any glass items) most of the gifts were distributed. Number One Son came in shaking his last gift. "Finally", he said, "This one sounds a little Legoish."

The kids both seemed to enjoy what they got. SP got a Lil Lovables monkey to stuff with her bear-stuffing machine. Yay, more animals!

Number One Son got an Eyeclops. This is an electronic camera that plugs into the TV and enlarges everything it sees 200 times. Both kids had fun seeing what their hair, moles and owies looked like up close.

After gifts we all went sledding and snowboarding until we were too tired to walk up the hill. Then I got the best Christmas gift I could get, a nap. "Gasp, just what I've always wanted!" At least it was until I woke up to raucous laughter and an Eyeclops up my nose displaying a nostril forest on the TV.

We ended our day playing the board game, Life, as a family. This was a gift from Gramma and Grampa Klein. Sweet Pea had a little trouble understanding about paydays and buying insurance, but she perked up when Lady Di landed on the space that said "You have a baby girl". SP kept asking which path to follow on the board to get children. Unfortunately, Lady Di was the only player to get a car load of kids in the game. This disappointed SP so much, she didn't really care how much money she had at the end of the game. All she really wanted was some children. I guess that means that Christmas really is for children.

Maybe, next Christmas.