Are we having fun yet?: the most fun christmas so far.....

Man, this Christmas thing is really fun the more they get it. Until they get demanding. We had so much fun.

I've never done Christmas completely myself before. We've always had family or friends to invite over, but never just us. I've really been missing out. I was worried about it being fun enough, but it was definitely fun. The babies made it so fun. We had so much fun watching them.

It started around 7 am. Tucker has been falling asleep late the last three nights. One night 9, the next 9:30, last night 10:00. And of course he wakes up the same time every morning. Around 7. Since we waited for him to fall asleep to finish prepping, we got to bed late and I was hoping for a bit of sleeping in. Nope. This morning he turned on the light in his room and went and sat back on his bed. I went in there when I saw the light go on. Whitney needed more sleep and didn't even flinch with the light turning on. I walked in and asked him, "Tucker, what are you doing awake?" He looked at me and said " It's sunny outside". This is their standard response to it's light enough to stay awake. When they wake up in the night, I say they have to go back to bed because it's dark. Anyway, I had to laugh, because it's not sunny here in the winter. I opened the blinds for Tucker and asked him "Do you see the sun?" The sky was only barely light enough to differentiate the sky from the trees, but only barely. Still very, very dark. He looked at me and said "I don't see it!" Whatever, we were awake.

We were doing the usual morning routine in their room. I acted like it was a normal morning until Jim got up. When Jim came in, Tucker got all excited and said he wanted to watch Papa out the window. Usually when he sees Daddy in the morning, it's only to see him off to work out the window. So Jim explained he got to stay home this morning. To Whitney he asked, "Whitney, do you want to see if Santa came?" She said, Yeah, in her casual Whitney way, not really convinced Santa came and having no expectation for something exciting. Then she walked in the living room. Her face lit up and she laughed a bunch. Then she looked at Jim, like, is this for real? And laughed some more and ran over to check out..... the doll house. I told Jim I thought Whitney would really like a doll house about now and was looking at the smaller, plastic ones for toddlers. Then Jim found this one and bought it. It's pretty fun. Both kids absolutely love it.

Jim stayed up to assemble it. He had put all the furniture in it and even added a great touch of putting her Thing 1 doll in the bed. That's what she saw when she walked into the living room.

My favorite part about this Christmas morning is how much fun we had opening presents. They checked out each and every one. We didn't even start opening presents for a half an hour because they were so busy playing with the doll house. Whitney took her doll up the stairs, checked it all out. Tucker liked sliding the couch down the doll house stairs. I think my mother will laugh at this. There is an iron and ironing board that came with the doll house. Whitney has no idea what it is, let alone how to play with it. We don't own an ironing board and when I iron on a rare occasion, I'm not sure she's been present for it.

Tucker also discovered the blanket on the bed is the perfect size to make a burrito with his Thing 2 doll. He wrapped and unwrapped Thing 2 several times throughout the day saying " He wants a burrito. He is tired".

The next exciting gift was the train set. As soon as he got a bit of paper off and saw the Thomas train car, he could barely contain himself. He was right there with Daddy setting it all up and played with it off and on most of the day. This train set also has some mechanical parts that he loves, like a plug to turn on a light and a coal chute that puts it in the train as it goes under.

The other toy they enjoyed a bunch is the playdough ice cream shoppe. I was just looking for the play dough press that made spaghetti that I played with as a kid, but of course they don't sell simple toys like that any more. It has to be cooler. So I found the press idea in the ice cream maker. But boy did we (me) have fun playing with it, making ice cream cones and brownies for daddy.

It was so fun to have them play with each thing for a good long while before even wanting to open another gift.

To "wrap it all up" they helped me get the boxes ready for the recycle. It all started because Whitney liked the popping noise the styrofoam I was breaking down. It turned into an indoor snow globe in Jim's office that I'll be vacuuming up for months to come. Next time you see the little tiny round bead in a styrofoam cup, think billions of those in our house. But it was so funny to watch them play.