Home for Christmas

We kept referring to it as the first Christmas we've been by ourselves, but in reality, there are five of us now. So while we missed being with the extended family, we didn't feel nearly as alone as we thought we would. Between the mayhem of allowing two toddlers to finally open the gifts they've been warned not to touch for three weeks and the mayhem of having a six-week-old in constant need of a diaper or costume change, it was a pretty full day.

We kicked off our Christmas morning by reading our last Advent passage and putting the final star on our calendar. Abby and Caleb dug into their stockings to find stickers, a big stuffed animal each (a frog for Abby, a puppy for Caleb and a monkey for Jacob), and some snack holders shaped like a shark (Caleb) and a smiling goldfish (Abby). Abby was so overwhelmed by her new sheets of stickers that I think she would have happily ignored the presents under the tree for the rest of the day had we not instructed them each to open one while we waited for our breakfast casserole to bake.

Once they figured out that the boxes under the tree had stuff inside, and that most of that stuff was for them, Abby and Caleb got pretty excited. They still have no idea who Santa is, although they understand that he's somehow loosely associated with Jesus' birthday. Caleb wanted us to open all his presents for him so he could continue playing and not waste time with the whole paper peeling process. Abby would get about halfway through unwrapping a present, then pause and pensively ask, "What's it going to be?" This became the catch phrase of our day.

As if the day wasn't crazy enough, Uncle Matt armed our children with some Texas style pistols. Abby loved her cowgirl ensemble, complete with real Texas boots, pink hat and double holster for her pink handled pistols. Caleb proceeded to run around the room in his black cowboy hat poking people with his double action cap gun, when he wasn't driving his new Hess tractor trailer with the F-22 on the back. As for mom, I was officially initiated into the family this year with a pink BB gun of my very own from Justin's parents. Now I won't have to borrow one during our next Redneckathon. And I can be assured that none of the boys will borrow mine.

But the best gift of the day was from Santa himself (big guy gets all the credit). Apparently Santa only checks in on our kids on good days (or maybe he only sees them when they're sleeping) because between his gift and the 40 piece Thomas set Nana and Granddaddy sent, they are now the proud owners of way too many train pieces. We have to move the furniture now to make room for all the tracks and trains that we can build. Every other gift the kids received somehow worked its way into the train setup, and at one point we had a train that went all the way to Bethlehem, past an F-22 and around a cowboy hat. Once the train set came out, there was no more gift opening to be done, and we went to bed with three presents still under the tree.

Jacob joined us at various one-hour intervals throughout the day, and was mostly ambivalent toward everything he received for his first Christmas, with the exception of the giant stuffed monkey that the other two kept shoving in his face. "Jacob's monkey!" Caleb chanted. "Here Jacob! Jacob's monkey!"

After naps we enjoyed a fancy Christmas dinner of roasted vegetables, salad and pork tenderloin stuffed with spinach, cream cheese and sun dried tomatoes. Then it was time for our traditional Happy Birthday Jesus party. The kids sang happy birthday and helped blow out the candles on the cake they had made while I documented the event on the new camera Justin surprised me with.

It was a fun-filled, exhausting, exhilarating day. When it was over, we all crashed for the night, including Jacob, who is sleeping 11 hours at night now (which may just be the best Christmas present of all).

At bedtime, I asked Abby what her favorite thing about Christmas was.

"The star for Jesus' birthday," she said.

We're looking forward to many more years of celebrating our Savior's birth with these precious gifts of ours.