Christmas Morning 2008

We always spend Christmas morning at my parents house, where all of us open up our Santa gifts, stockings, and presents from immediate family. The family has grown every year. This year we are up to 2 parents, 5 siblings, 3 spouses, and 7 little ones. That’s 17 people that need to open presents in a timely fashion in order to make it down to Grandma and Grandpa Hayman’s house on time to do it all their with more family by the early afternoon. (Not to mention breakfast and showers.) I think it’s pretty obvious that we are always late.

We let the kids explore their Santa gifts whenever they wake up and make it downstairs. When Andy and I got to the house at 7am, all of the Harris’ were already awake... Evin, Braxton and Quinlan were showing off their goods to us the moment we walked in the door. This was also the first time we’d seen them in a year, so we had fun teasing them and admiring their gifts. Then Lynnae, Charlie, Brinly and Adam all wandered down at about the same time. Lynnae and Evin (10) hit it off really fast, and it was pretty hard for me to get her attention from the moment they said “hi”. Lynnae was super-excited to see her keyboard and Charlie immediately started working on his golfing skills. They also had fun going through their stockings, where they were both excited to see that Santa had brought them each a harmonica (among other things.) Lynnae also got a special toothbrush and toothpaste that the Tooth Fairy had given to Santa on Christmas Eve, because she had lost her tooth.

Then we went through the opening presents bit, and every now and then people would sneak off to the kitchen to eat some of the breakfast that my mom always lays out. Charlie’s favorite gift was probably “rocks” that he got from the Harris’. They are special crayons that teach kids to hold the right way. Incidentally, he still loves them and used them to write his name for the first time last week. Lynnae really liked her Easy Bake Oven and was excited to get TWO Cabbage Patch Kids. (If you knew me when I was little, you know that I was once obsessed with collecting these things!)