Christmas...

On Christmas Eve, Joseph carefully selected his favorite gingerbread "boy" and set them out on a plate for Santa. He placed carrot sticks in a neat line outside the front door for the reindeer. Then, saying, "Wake me up when Santa is here!" he jumped into bed.

Chad and I spent a relaxing evening watching Christmas movies, exchanging gifts and tracking Santa. At one point, Chad started nibbling on the cookies. Before long they were gone, leaving nothing but crumbs. Before we went to bed, we replaced the cookies with a thank you note from Santa (he is just so polite) and Joseph's gift.

I woke up, head pounding, throat raw and coughing. Joseph woke up excited. We raced out to the living room. He nearly went insane.

"SANTA ATE MY COOKIES!!!"

"REINDEER ATE CARROTS!!!!"

And when he opened up his toy train...he couldn't contain himself. He ran in circles, trying in vain to gasp out that "SANTA. GOT. ME. A. TRAIN!" Immediately followed by, "TAKE IT OUT!!!" I couldn't help laughing. He was so excited I thought he was going to keel over.

We spent the rest of the morning slowly opening gifts in between taking pictures, playing with new toys, making monkey bread and drinking tea with lemon. (Where or where is the honey when you need it?!)

Boppa, G and Gran came over to ooh and ahh over the loot and to enjoy the Cinnamon goodness of monkey bread.

The rest of the day passed fairly quickly. Benny and Rachel came over to exchange gifts and play. Becky and I made a ham dinner, complete with Mom's homemade bread rolls. I napped off and on, cuddled in my sweats on the couch.

Joseph had a hard time deciding on which toy to play with first. (Chad had the same problem.) At one point, Boppa, Chad and Joseph were all huddled around Gorilla Mountain, exploring the various trap doors, booby traps and animals. I took my turn helping Joseph roll out his new Play Dough set, cutting out shapes. We all took a turn building log cabins with the Lincoln logs. And that dang train that Santa left...well...let's just say Thomas is the little engine that just won't stop.

All in all, it was a very nice, very mellow Christmas.