Orrr you know, two weeks after Christmas.  Same difference

Christmas morning is quite possibly my most favorite morning of the year.  Seeing the look on my kiddos faces when they wake me up is the stuff I dreamed about when I was younger and thought about what my kids would be like.  This year, they were kind and let us sleep in ’til about 7AM.  Kenz crawled in bed with us (like she does most nights) at some point during the night.   When she woke up, she rolled over and rubbed my face to wake me up like she normally does.  I told her it was Christmas Day and she bolted over to the window yelling something about wanting to see the snow.  Poor kiddo thought that Christmas morning meant we’d have snow.  She was a little bummed when I told her that it doesn’t really snow in Florida, but reminding her that Santa came changed her mood pretty quickly.

We texted our parents and my brother to let them know Kenz was up and distracted her while we waited for Braden to wake up.  Right around the time everyone got here, he woke up too and we headed downstairs to see what Santa brought.

In the past, we kind of had a free-for-all and let the kids tear through their presents.  This year, we didn’t put their names on their packages (we had different wrapping paper for each kid) so that helped slow them down a bit.  We got them to help pass out presents to everyone else in between opening theirs.  It was a lot nicer – we actually got to see their reaction to each of their gifts.

Either last year or the year before, we started taking the kids shopping to pick out gifts for each other and for me, Adam, our parents, and my brother.  Their gifts are my favorite to open because you never know what to expect.  We don’t help them at all, we just ask them what they want to get or set them loose in Target and see what they come up with.  This year, Kenz got me a few scarves and gloves, which I loved.  My favorite gift was from Braden.  Adam said when he asked B what he wanted to get for me, he didn’t hesitate at all and said “chocolate!!”.  They went to Peterbrooke, a local chocolatier, an picked out four different dark chocolate covered goodies.  It was my favorite gift this year and I love that he knows me so well.

And this was the aftermath.  We make no attempt to clean up the paper as we go, we just toss it over by the stairs.  So many hours of wrapping and it’s just a big old mess!

I think this was Mackenzie’s favorite gift. Her dress-up stuff was all shoved in a rubbermaid bin in the playroom, which made it really hard for her to find stuff. I asked my dad to build her something to hold it all and this is what he came up with!  We moved it into the playroom and it’s so nice that she can get to all of her dresses, shoes, tutus, jewelry, tiara’s, etc.

After we finished with presents, we had a breakfast casserole I’d prepped the night before.  I need to share the recipe because it was SO good.  it had crescent rolls mixed in and was so easy to make.  I just mixed it all in a bowl the night before and left it in the ‘fridge, then dumped it all in a pan in the morning and baked for 45ish minutes.

We spent the rest of the day relaxing, opening toys, putting them together, etc.  One of the things I really love about Christmas is all of the cards we get.  I got the idea to hang them on our cabinets from Pinterest and I love seeing all of the smiling faces in there.  All of our Christmas stuff is packed away for now, but I haven’t taken the cards down yet.  I wish I had a better picture because I love how it looks!

We had a lovely dinner and between that, the apps throughout the day, and dessert, I was stuffed.  Totally gained a few pounds over the holidays, but worth every  bite!  I didn’t realize until after everyone left that we forgot to take a family picture in front of the tree.. so I set the timer on my camera and we tried..

And this was the best we got!  The lighting is awful, but taking a good picture with the timer is hard!!

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas with your family!  I’m so sad that it is over (and especially that my 2.5 week vacation from work is over!) and I’m already counting down the days ’til next Christmas!