Christmas 2011

(Leila was more interested in sitting on the presents than opening them. She did the same thing at our house.)

I may have told this story already, but when I was in 9th grade, a few of our neighborhood boys stole our Christmas. Yep, that's right. My mom kept our presents at work until the day before. The boys saw my parents unloading our gifts into our locked camper. They broke in through the bottom access doors and took everything that would fit out of those small doors. Long story short, my entire family was awake at 2am. We decided to stay up and open presents that were under the tree. After presents we played some games and had some snacks then went to bed. So later that morning, family members from out of town started calling to see how our Christmas was. We were still sleeping because we had been up all night. They thought we had not woken up for Christmas morning. WELL...I tell this story now, because that year started a new tradition for our family.

Christmas Eve is the more celebrated of the two days. We have dinner, play game, and just socialize with one another. Then when the clock hits midnight, it's time for presents! We have done this every year since 1994 (the year of the event if I recall correctly.) Since we now have children that need visits from Santa Clause, we have made arrangements for Santa to come to our house a bit later so we can keep our tradition, but still have Santa bring the kids presents. That is exactly what happened this year.

(Leila LOVED this dog from Kiley. It whimpers, barks, pants, and growls. The first thing she pushed it whimpered. She put her own puppy dog eyes on, pulled the puppy up to her face, and in her cute "concerned" voice said "you okay?" Then hugged it and gave it a kiss. SO sweet.)

We opened presents at Grandma's house, then went home and opened presents at our house. (*please note, when we got home it was around 1 am and Leila was STILL awake. So she watched us open our presents...we left hers for the morning after Santa came.) We went to bed, Santa came, we got up, saw what Santa brought, went to church, came home and opened the rest of Leila's presents, my parents and brother came over for breakfast, we watched basketball (opening day for the NBA season after their lockout.) and then took naps.

I LOVE that we don't have to do a lot of family stuff for Christmas. It's usually a pretty low key day that we just get to enjoy those closest to us, not the ENTIRE family.