Christmas Morning!!!

Christmas morning was so much fun around our house! I just love that the kids are BOTH old enough to anticipate and be excited for Christmas morning! We had told the kids the night before to be sure to stay in bed till we came to get them up... and then set our alarm just in case we were tempted to sleep in.

I got the video camera ready and took some cute video of the kids reactions... THIS is what Mack saw!

And THIS was for Rhyan!

They were SO excited about the trampoline for sure!!!  It was the first thing Rhyan went to! The way Santa works around here is that the "Big" things are to be shared and the smaller things that are more gender specific are obviously for each kid alone.

Mack was STOKED about his dinosaur!

Ever since Rhyan started Pre-K in the fall, Mack has been allllll about a backpack! He has cried over wanting to carry hers into tracy's house each morning. He's asked for his own big boy backpack. He has checked them out at the store and picked out his favorite 3. Ha!  But we kept telling him to wait for Christmas! (our kids get lots of little treats throughout the year... yard sale finds, etc... so i think its good for them to learn delayed gratification, too). He just HAD To try it on! And of course, he loved it!

We also used Christmas morning as a time to put Mack's wall decorations up... he loved it, too!!!

And Jeff had suggested that maybe we try starting a yearly tradition of going to Waffle House for Christmas breakfast, so I said "why not". I was surprised at how many people were there! Crazy people ;-) haha

And Jeff tried to get one pic of me with my babies (i had forgotten to change lens so he had to take it with my 50mm... too close! HA!). Mack wasnt having it, though. But this pic pretty much sums up how he acted at breakfast that morning anyways. I told Jeff i'm not sure that I'm ready to make going out somewhere a tradition. Christmas morning is hectic enough as it is. And the kids want to stay w/ the toys, obviously. So we didnt get the best behavior from them (well, mack... haha).

We came back to the house to continue to play with the new toys and I started working on organizing the playroom and deciding what was to stay or go :-) This mama cant stand clutter and Christmas is a natural cluttered time!

We were so excited that the kids seemed to really like what they got. Santa tried very hard this year to stick to a budget and limit how many toys the kids got. Last year, there was just TOO much and it literally took weeks for them to get around to playing with everything even once. So this year was MUCH better and the focus on fewer quality items was great!

Then, we read our bible about the birth of Jesus and talked about how fun it is to give gifts and have a great time but that we have to always remember that its not our birthday, its Jesus's. Rhyan kind of gets it. Mack wanted to just jump on the trampoline ;-)

Grandparents came over at different times in the morning to check out the kids loot and we had a great time spending time with them as well! We are a blessed family, indeed!