christmas morning

I was on such a roll, and then I got distracted or something.  So my Christmas posts are way late and I've still got New Year's and Elsie's 23 month post on my to-do list.  And then maybe I'll actually come up with something more exciting to blog about.  A girl can dream, right?  Ha.

Anyway, Christmas morning!  After a fun evening at my uncle's house, the girls actually slept until almost 8am.  A Christmas miracle no doubt.  When Elsie woke up we pulled her in to bed with us and told her Merry Christmas.  She told us Merry Christmas too, then proceeded to pull up her shirt and said "Merry Christmas be-bo!"  I about died.  Only my child would tell her belly button Merry Christmas.  We laid around for a bit until my mom texted that Ryann was up.  She was anxious to peek in her stocking, but I convinced everyone to have breakfast first since they were only serving it until 9am.

The particular hotel we were staying in only has a continental style buffet, cereal, crappy muffins, yogurt, etc.  So our Christmas breakfast was a little lackluster.  But it got the job done and we raced back upstairs to see all the gifts that Santa brought.

Elsie was obsessed with her umbrella.  She is a Hello Kitty fanatic.  I have no idea why.  And she thought the Hello Kitty umbrella was pretty much the coolest thing ever.  They also had some stickers, bath paints, crayons, coloring books and a couple of other random things in their stockings.

Then we moved on to the family gifts.  In our family Santa only fills the stockings.  I mean, why should the imaginary red suited guy get all the glory?  Honestly I'm still undecided as to how much I'll allow Santa to influence our holiday season.  We talk about Santa, but we don't make a huge deal about him.  I don't remember Santa being some huge magical thing when I was little.  I remember when I found out he wasn't real, but I don't remember being super pissed about it or anything.  Maybe I was, I have no idea.  The thing I struggle with the most is how to deal with Santa in a way that works for our family, without taking away the magic for someone else's family.  Life is complicated.  Ha.

In that last one the heater was giving Ryann quite the model wind blown look.  It was awesome.  The girls got some great gifts, and I was pretty pleased with a new camera strap, running shoes, an external hard drive and a new dishwasher (thanks mom and dad!).  We had a great day, but I'm so excited to see what Christmas can look like in our new home.