Christmas Day 2012

Ahhh....Christmas Day! After a rather late night "staging," I pushed back the girls' clock an hour (our little secret) since our family rule is that you cannot wake up the parents before 7:00 am. The first thing the girls noticed was that we had ourselves a white Christmas this year! The last thing the girls noticed was the trampoline and even covered in snow, they still had to go out for a test run. They pretended it was an ice-skating rink.

Everyone seemed happy with their Christmas loot. Ella received a “Christmas miracle” bear (the huge 5 ft Costco bear). I still can’t believe that her bear is bigger than she is--truly, I am not a big fan of the size! Questions like: "Where should I put this?" made me think twice about this acquisition. But with an electric scooter and a camera in her pile, ‘Truffles the bear’ was still Ella’s favorite gift! Kayla was more democratic and would not name any one gift as her favorite. Dessie seemed to enjoy her Lucky Charms more than anything else in her pile. I think Stephen’s favorite gift was the timer he can put on our soaker hose to water our house, followed closely by my gift card for a free garage organization consult (by yours truly). I made good on that gift card over the break and I am happy to say that the garage finally meets my cleanliness standards (for now anyway).

The only tiny hitch about the whole day is that now I have to deal with Ella documenting every aspect of her life on camera. It makes me truly grateful that we live in a digital world where I can preview her pictures before I have to spend any money making copies. And on the plus side, my highlight of Christmas day was chatting with both of our families over the computer—another reason to love a digital world! We especially loved chatting with Uncle Dallen who is serving a mission in Chile and Grandpa and Grandma Reber who are serving in Brazil. We love that we feel so close even when we are geographically far away!

Hope your Christmas was just as joyful!