Merry Christmas 12/25/10

We have a tradition that we spend Christmas Day at home. We tell all of our family that they are welcome to come to our house if they want. This year we told Marc that if he woke up any time after 6:00am he could come wake us up. He woke up at 6:20!Samantha was still sleeping so we came down with Marc and he opened his stocking.After he looked through his stocking and did a little playing he had some of our traditional pineapple coffee cake (thanks Mom!!). After we ate breakfast we got dressed and made ourselves "presentable". ;-) This was about the time that Samantha woke up. So, not it was her turn to look through her stocking.
We let the kids play with their stocking goodies as long as they want. They both got those paddle ball thingys. Where there is a paddle and a ball attached to a piece of elastic. It was very entertaining watching the kids play!
It has become a rule in our house that on Christmas morning people are not allowed to come to our house until 10:00. This gives us time to spend together as a family, an having the kids open the presents from us. We let the kids open a present and then play with it for as long as they want to before moving onto the next one. We know that once everyone else gets here it gets pretty chaotic and they don't really get to play with anything until after everything is opened.
The first present we had Samantha open was her "Little Mommy" doll. I LOVE the look on her face!!!!
When we were down in AR over Thanksgiving, we went to Chuck E Cheese for Marc's birthday. They had a very large version of Operation as one of their games. Marc thought that was really fun, so we got him the "old fashion" version for Christmas.
My Mom got Samantha a nursery set (with a baby) to go with her "Little Mommy" Mom doll. I fin it very interesting that Samantha knew exactly how to feed that baby doll. She has not been around other girls feeding dolls before. Must be there really is a "Mommy" gene in little girls. :-)
My Grandma gave each of the kids one of the new Hallmark recordable books. What a great idea! Now, every year they can listen to Great Grandma reading them a story. :-)
This is Samantha with all of her new toys.
And all of her new clothes.
Marc with all of his new toys.
An Marc with all of his new clothes.
I look at the pictures just above an think to myself, "Man, my kids are spoiled!!" Then I think back to when people told me I was spoiled when I was younger and I said, "Nope, just well loved!". I was just joking around back in the day, but how true is what I was saying and not even realizing it???? My kids are very loved and are very special. It was a great Christmas spent with great family!