And with that, Christmas Day officially began.
The day unofficially began when Cameron arrived at our bedside sometime before solar dawn. He was told to take himself back to bed in no uncertain terms. The next kid to appear was Claire, dragging her Purple Blanket, who climbed in next to her dad and promptly went back to sleep. Next was Aeron, who wanted to know if it was now Christmas Day. When I told her yes, she squealed with joy, climbed into the bed and started to shake me, saying, "Mama! Come on! Time to open presents!!! Come on!!"
I managed to stall for a few more minutes by asking Aeron to go tell her sister Kayla it was finally Christmas Day. The little girl scampered off and Miles, Claire and I got a few more minutes of horizontal. But Aeron came back rather quickly, saying Kayla told her it was too early and to go away. Then Cameron was back, and as it was (barely) daylight, we surrendered to the inevitable. Cameron was instructed to go turn on the coffee maker and we sent Aeron back to roust Kayla.
We had a lovely time opening gifts, with lots of squeals and shouts from the younger 3. Gifts of clothing and books and a few toys and gadgets were opened and exclaimed over. A few photos were taken.
Pam was supposed to roust Terry and Trevor and come to our house to have brunch and open more gifts. As of 9:30am, someone who shall remain nameless still wasn't out of bed. So, we decided to pack up our show and take it down to SLO. We got out the door in record time and descended on the San Luis Clarks.
Santa bags were opened and more oohs and ahhs were heard. Then I took a break to get the cinnamon rolls in the oven, along with my veggie strata. Once the cooking chores were done, we moved on to the living room, to open more gifts. Everyone was very pleased with the wonderful presents. Then, weary from opening Christmas gifts, we repaired to the dining room to stuff ourselves silly with brunch. So silly in fact, no one wanted dinner that evening.
The older two went off to their mom's house and they rest of us had some downtime. I had a nap, since I hadn't gotten to sleep until sometime after 2am that morning. When Miles returned from delivering Kayla and Cam to Atascadero, we plunked the little girls in front of the video babysitter. And opened still yet more gifts (I'm so glad we cut back this year....)
When the Templeton Clarks finally crawled home, we were all tired and mellow after a happy day.
* Claire found a frog bath sponge in her stocking. Aeron got a duckie.
When I read about Aeron shaking Jennifer and saying to get up it was time to open presents, I thought to myself, I bet she did that to her mother when she was that age. It sounds like a wonderful day.
ReplyDeleteThat sounds a lot like our Christmas routine. Up at dawn, lots of coffee, a meal at 1PM that fulfills everyone until New Year's... :)
ReplyDelete