Christmas Sunday

Christmas was quickly approaching and more and more presents magically appeared around the Christmas tree.  My kids hovered over them as if they could see through the paper, into each rectangular box with their name on it.  This year I even bought the Costco wrapping paper to keep the kids from "accidently" ripping a hole in some of the neatly wrapped gifts.  I am pretty sure I caught Justin with tape, more than once, trying to fix an "accident" on several presents.  And he was pretty spot on when it came to guessing what was inside his gifts along with everyone else's, which made me quite suspicious.  So as you can imagine, the suspense was killing us all!  When I announced to the kids several days before Christmas that we would be opening presents after church on Christmas morning (since we had 9 o'clock church) it was almost more than they could bear, and the grumbles and moaning errupted.  

Christmas morning finally arrived, Millie, Justin and Simon were bright eyed and bushy tailed, ready to party as expected at 6:30am (Noah, our little sleeping angel, was still quiet, and we let him enjoy another hour of beauty sleep).  They were so excited to find their new really awesome mountain bikes along with a few other little gadgets Santa had left them.  And to be honest, the kids were surprisingly content to enjoy the moment without a single reference to opening all the presents under the tree.  There was something particularly pleasant about saving some of the magical fun of Christmas morning for later.  

The highlight of Christmas morning for me was church.  Christmas Sunday is something that only happens every seven years.  And it is one of my favorite things!  This year church was mostly music with a short Christmas message (which seems to be standard for Christmas Sunday) .  It was perfectly lovely, and so wonderful to remember Jesus Christ and his birth, sing about him and feel the Spirit of Christmas, and then go home and keep that with us.  I sang with the choir, so I got the full feeling.  Neal was with all the kids, so its likely he had a completely different experience.  Even so, it was great to attend Church on Christmas Sunday.

And finally the presents were distributed and opened.  I am sure it was chaos and the kids were not as agreeable as my mind wants to remember, but I think everyone was thankful and enjoyed their Christmas in the end.