Photo-A-Day #4275

Today was an excellent Christmas. There have been great ones before but today was exceptional. The morning started a bit too early for my taste. It wasn’t even the kids that made it early. I just woke up at 5am and knew I wasn’t going to go back to sleep, so I got out of bed. Allison followed about 20 minutes later. I played some Skylanders until close to 7am when I had to go up and get the kids to come down. This was certainly not like the days when I was a kid and would head down to get my stocking and my sister’s stockings and bring them upstairs for us to open. Either I would go get them or one of my sisters would. We still do stockings at my parent’s house. There are just way more on the mantle.

When the kids came down we opened all the gifts under the tree. They found the note from Santa and Fitzy. Andrew was very saddened that Fitzy did not come back today. He will miss that elf. I’m so glad that these kids still believe in Christmas magic. They are all in when it comes to believing! In the video below you can see them opening and enjoying their gifts. Andrew did get a little bit ahead of himself today. Then again he is 5. I remember being 5 and wanting nothing more than to play with my toys immediately. We did set up his train set and he enjoyed that. We;ll get to the rest of the toys this week and have plenty of time to set things up.

Eva was excited over the hardcover illustrated Harry Potter books and a huge stack of duct tape. She has already made things for Andrew, Mimi and Dano. Speaking of Mimi and Dano, we did Facetime in the morning so that they could see the kids open the gifts that they got for us. We took them all around the downstairs and showed them Andrew’s train and more. I can’t wait to set up the Hot Wheels Garage. I got that way back almost a full year ago. It was one of my first Daily vlog videos – Winter Grilling and A Huge Clearance Find at Target! So that one came from Mom and Dad and not Santa.

After our morning we headed to my parent’s house to have lunch and open more presents. It was a big chaotic but very nice. We even ended the trip with a gingerbread man decorating contest. I made a Ninja-Bread man and so did Allison. Her’s was really well done and then my niece, Kylie ate it. It was too cute to be upset. Eva did an amazing job making her gingerbread girl look just like her, dress and all. Andrew loaded his up with as much candy as he could. That’s Andrew.

We left my parent’s house and went to my friend Brian’s place. Brian is the cohost of SteamDads with me. He is also host of his own show, Built from Bricks, which I guested on this week. We had a nice time there, had great food and I got to stand in for someone in the Yankee Swap. I hope that they like lots of stuff for the bathroom. It was a great day. I hope that yours was as well.