Ah, Christmas. I told the kids that they weren’t allowed to get up until it was light out. Of course, they were downstairs the second any sunlight came in their windows.

My favorite memories of 2013 present-opening:

• Reed and Lena handed out gifts. When they tried to give Gus one of his, he just said “no”. They had a brief stand-off, where they tried to hand it to him repeatedly, and he kept calmly saying “no”. Until I finally told them to just set it down and he’d open the rest of his gifts later.
• Another was when he opened his Yo Gabba Gabba DVD and stared at the case in wonder and confusion for about one whole minute. Finally, he smiled.
• Reed and Lena exclaimed “all of our pictures!” when they looked at their photo albums that I had made from one cent Snapfish pictures and dollar store albums. They took time to look through them before moving on to the next gift.
• Reed’s reaction to watching Gus and Lena open the gifts he had picked out for them. He was so, so excited to see them open what he had picked out for them. He got Lena a “purse”(makeup bag?) and Gus a Hot-Wheels car.
• Both Reed and Lena’s reaction to Reed opening Lena’s gift to him. She picked out toy nunchuks for him, because he loves ninjas. And he loved it.

After the present excitement had died down, we crossed 3 things off of Reed’s winter break to-do list by decorating gingerbread men.

Gus told me he wanted to decorate a cookie, but I knew that would happen. Lena told me that she “accidentally ate part of it”. I knew kids + cookies + candy = inevitable munching, so I just asked them to decorate more than they ate, which Reed and Lena did without a problem.

The toy-of-this-Christmas is definitely Reed’s remote control car. Lena also got a remote control car and Gus got a little remote control robot, but Reed’s is the big hit. Gus loves it so much that I’m tempted to get him one of his birthday. 

Merry Christmas, everyone!