And so this was Christmas.

This post is long overdue- so sorry. Well here is the proof that Santa arrived at our house on Christmas Eve. Jessica left a surprise wrapped gift for Santa. The surprise was on Santa because it was a kit to make an ornament. Well Santa was nice enough to take the time to create the ornament and leave it behind for us to put on our tree.

I tiptoed down and took these pictures after Santa left. Here is Jessica's haul- she chose to use the Hogwarts Stocking this year.

Here is Justin's haul...
Marc and I had stockings too but they weren't overflowing so no pics here. Here is a shot of the tree as well as some of the gifts that were to both of them.

One last shot before I headed to bed.
Jessica was very excited for Xmas this year- the days leading up you could just feel how excited she was getting. She ended up spiking a fever on Christmas Eve and mostly I think it was just her body not able to handle the overload. She was in our room 3x during the night because she couldn't sleep. At 5:30am she begged to be allowed to stay awake- nope!

Now in our house, as was the case for both of us growing up, you are allowed to go downstairs in the morning on your own and look at and enjoy your stockings. As a child the rule was my sister and I could go down at 6am but we weren't allowed to wake up my mom until 8am. There are always many different activities and things in the stockings to keep you busy for those 2 hours. Then presents are not opened until after breakfast has been eaten. In the past I have joined the kids for the stocking reveal and listened to their squeals of joy. This year I told them they couldn't go down until 7am. So they came in to wake me up. I told them they could go downstairs. Justin asked if they could open up the gifts. I told him they could open their stocking presents. So Justin asked again, "what about my nerf guns? those are next to the stocking can I open those?". At that point it became clear they had already ventured downstairs and I had missed the squeals of joy- so.... I rolled back over and went back to sleep. At 8am Jessica came up and asked me to PLEASE come down and open my stocking- so I did. And I found THE AFTERMATH- that horrible situation that only continued to grow throughout Christmas day. The situation that forced Marc to proclaim half way through the day that we were doing things differently next year and they would only be allowed to open half their gifts in the morning and the other half late in the day. Yeah we will see how that pans out. Here is the first shot of the aftermath- I tried to avoid taking too many.

The kids were still very into playing with their Santa toys and not that interested in Breakfast. But poor Marc had been looking at this cake all night- so he dug in! Yup, this is breakfast on Xmas. Justin doesn't really like cake so he wants to know why we can't have brownies for breakfast on Xmas- so look for a new addition next year.
They finally ate something and we began to open up the gifts. Justin trying on the coon hat he got!

Jessica taking a break in the present opening to load up her new notebook with some Pokemon cards.
Justin decided that was a good plan so he did too.

Once all the gifts were opened we had to try them out. Here is the gift that Justin got from the Bordens. He was throwing these balls at the velcro vest- Marc was nervous about Justin's aim. As soon as the balls hit the floor Buddy took off after them.
Justin playing with his new wall driving car from Aunt Kathy- the two story walls are so cool with this toy!
I took out my new flash accessory- the Gary Fong Lightsphere- and took a couple of pictures.
And then we showed off our new jammies!
It was a very fun and relaxing day. THE AFTERMATH took at least a week to banish and that felt good as well.