Christmas Day

The rule was: You have to stay in your room until mom & dad come and get you. We heard singing and dancing, which quickly turned to pleas of "Can we come out now?"And after opening their stockings and pausing for breakfast we dove into a mountain of gifts. We practiced for a year to say "Thank you so much" after every gift, because of the incident with the batman pajamas. Last year AK was annoyed when we tried to get her to open more gifts, this year AK tore through her gifts with gusto.
Mr. Boy has talked about this red dragon since August. He wrote Santa and this was one of the items he whispered in Santa's ear.

Again, this year we tried to pair it down, we look at this picture and wonder what happened. Shhh... on Christmas Eve Santa & Mrs. Claus may have reevaluated some of the gifts and put some away. Mrs. Claus even hummed "You're a mean one Mr. Grinch" while Santa tried to put away some of Mrs. Claus's favorite gifts. In the end, we both decided to postpone a handful of gifts for later in the year. A good move.... because these next few pics scream "spoiled!" Notice all the blue boxes, that's all Playmobil my, er.. I mean Mr. Boys favorite toys. AK and I have a weekly ritual of watching the trash truck, and when the recycle bin was dumped it was a shower of blue boxes. AK started yelling, "Oh NO, my PLAYMOBILS!" As AK was getting ready for her pic, Mr. Boy leaned in to offer some encouragement.
Christmas Evening looked like this.... Kids & Dogs in the disaster zone aka the living room, still in their jammies playing with their new toys.

Big boys in the other room... still in their jammies.... playing with their new toys... It was the perfect day, including a new camera for me and a two hour nap!