Santa Came!

Well, here it is about 5pm on Christmas day, and the girls are locked in their rooms playing with their new Barbies, after a Just Dance 2 dance marathon, Brent is out playing with his new drill, and I'm sipping on a cup of coffee, trying not to be mesmerized by the lava lamps that my girls received and somehow ended up plugged in on our fireplace hearth.

I find those things eerily hypnotizing.  I can't even imagine if I was tripping on acid or smoking dope...Not that I've ever done either of those.  But my brain is tired from lack of sleep and too much sugar...

We stayed home this Christmas, just the four of us.  I love it.  While I miss my family on the day, it is nice to just be home as a family and truly focus on why we are celebrating instead of rushing from place to place and trying to convince my girls that they really don't need to drag all of their new toys with them.

Popcorn woke me up at 2:04 AM this morning. She was bouncing our bed and joyously exclaiming "Santa came!!!"

And I barely slit my eyes open and said quite grumpily, "GO TO BED AND DO NOT GET UP UNTIL AT LEAST 5AM!!!"

And I promptly went back to sleep.  Next thing I know, Bookworm is bouncing my bed.  "Mom, Dad!  It's after 5!"

And sure enough it was 5:58AM...

So, I drug my bleary self into the living room to be wowed by the bounty Santa brought us.  A fishing pole for Bookworm, a doll for Popcorn, and he got me this awesome sign that I can't wait to decide where to put it:

How hilarious is that?  Anyway, about 6:45 my phone alerted me I had a text.  It read, "Well, if your kids haven't woke you, I am.  Present time!  Merry Christmas!"  It was from my brother.

I laughed.  I brought my phone into the wrapping paper explosion known as my living room and read the text.  "You know, when we were little, Uncle David used to wake me up in the middle of the night to go look at toys.  We would take our stockings over to the tree and hold the items up to the tree lights to try and figure out what we had."  Of course, we had a real tree, not an artificial like ours is, and it was not absolutely solid with lights like mine is now. So, it really was kind of a guessing game to figure out what some things were.   David was always very certain that I understood that I MUST put all of the goodies back INTO the stocking in the exact order that I REMOVED them...

It was years before I understood that rule.  I simply followed it as I knew he was much better at trickiness than I was, so I'd better listen to his wisdom.  After all, he'd already sent me in to our parent's  room AT LEAST once to see if we could get up.  I would always wonder why I had to be the one to ask if we could open presents, and he was always very honest that I was the youngest and cutest, and therefore the most likely to be able to coax them to get out of their warm bed. 

Anyway, David was the master of Christmas stealth and he was quite firm on the keeping all contents in their original order.  And now I laugh at that, considering there were four kids, and if Santa was as freaked about getting our stockings filled before any "creatures were stirring" like I'm sure he is at our house, then I'm pretty sure the order of filling the stocking wasn't that well inventoried.

Aaaanyway, to make a long story longer, I told the girls that David and I always peeked in our stockings before the 5AM allowed rising time...

Popcorn smiled slyly  and said, "I got up and looked at all of my stuff last night."  And then when she looked in Bookworm's stocking (her nosiness knows no bounds, apparently) and spotted her sister's very coveted Aunty and Uncle dollhouse dolls she simply HAD to wake her to share the excitement.

Apparently partners in sneakiness runs in the family.

P.S.  Gentle Reader, I'm almost certain I've shared this at least once before.  However, every year as we start to dig through our stockings (my favorite part, by the way) I grin to myself as I remember the magic of Christmas for a child.