Christmas day in the morning!

Since the boys were up so late on Christmas Eve, they were in no hurry to wake up on Christmas morning. Parker woke up first around 8 and then we took him in to wake up Thomas around 8:30.


Then they came downstairs and were excited to see what was waiting for them. Parker quickly bypassed his gifts...


And was off to check out his brother's loot:


Then we reminded them about their stockings and we headed to check those out. Parker was a bit confused by everything. in most of the pictures he has this dazed look on his face. Too funny...

(Funny thing in the picture above. Santa left some crumbs on the plate...and Sully found them and was most happy that Santa left her a few nibbles.)

And then they checked out what was in their stockings...


A quick picture of our tree...

Notice how there are hardly any ornaments on the bottom of the tree. Parker decided it was his job to remove them all. If he could reach it, he took it off. Some of them he broke and some I replaced and some I simply gave up.

Thomas enjoyed his new Leapster game:


After breakfast, we opened gifts.




Thomas wanted to get right back to his game (though with his new headphones from Mommy & Daddy):


And Parker checked out and showed off all his new wheels...


Christmas is so much fun with children. They are just in such awe of the entire day. Hopefully we can continue to impress upon them the real reason for the season, and help them understand the joy of giving under that light. It does seem hard right now to get them to understand all of that, but at the very least, Thomas knew it was Jesus' birthday. So there's something. :)

They were just happy and having fun:




We spent about an hour Christmas morning visiting our homebound neighbor (our 70-years young neighbor was dealing with cancer). She was a wonderful neighbor for the years we have been here, and such a delightful and kind woman. The boys love her. It was a beautiful way to spend an hour on Christmas (she was home alone with her live-in nurse). The boys were wild and crazy, but she said she enjoyed it tremendously. It was, to me, much of what Christmas is about. We shared the boys' joy with her on Christmas. It cost us nothing, but paid her greatly; and paid us dividends too. I know that for me, hearing her faith and strength was exactly what I needed. I was so in awe of her positive and faithful Christian attitude. It was, sadly, the last time we all got to see her. She took a sudden turn for the worse and died on January 2. I am thankful that we had that time and that memory with her on Christmas morning.

Back to more joyous things, after lunch we headed up the road to Nana & Umpa's house. That will be for the next post (I still need to gather all the pics). Hopefully I'll get back to it soon!