Christmas come and gone

Ok, so the title of this post isn't really right - Christmas is *anything* but gone in the Morningstar home. The tree will likely be up for several more weeks, since we got it only a week before Christmas (I was serious when i said we were behind!) and the living room is still strewn with wrapping paper and Lego sets still to be assembled.

We had a *great* Christmas this year, and one of our healthiest yet - why do we always get sick on Christmas day?!? Sam got a bit of a tummy bug (yuck), which, in the spirit of the holidays, he gave to Steve and me and we are now currently fighting. But the day passed without an emergency trip to the pharmacist, so we'll call it a reasonably healthy Christmas.

The day started... early. The rule was that Sam couldn't wake us up until 6:30 and he very graciously let us sleep until 6:38 (he mentioned this several times throughout the day, I think that he was very impressed with his own generosity). So, yes, it's dark outside for many of our photos. That's because *the sun wasn't up yet*. I guess that's just how Christmas goes with excited little guys.

Actually, besides the hour and lack of daylight, the morning was my favorite part of the day. Usually, Steve reads the Christmas Story and the boys act it out with the stuffed nativity set that Gramma made when Sam was an itty bitty. Well, this year Sam decided that he was old enough to read the story, so he read the entire Christmas story out of Luke 2 from his own Bible while Ben and Daddy acted it out. He read all the way up to Jesus being presented at the temple and then Daddy took over for the part with the wise men - he was such a great reader! As usual, the story was embellished with a few shepherd vs. wise man fights, and Ben got a little carried away with the flashlight in his part as "the glory of the Lord" but over all I think it was one of our more peaceable readings.

It's always hard to pick out favorite gifts, but the ones that drew the most attention were definitely Steve's Star Wars Popup Guide to the Galaxy (this is seriously the coolest book of all time) and Ben's gift of candy for Steve (Reese's cups, Dark Chocolate M&M's, etc, which Ben promptly began consuming as part of showing Daddy how to "share" his gifts). Both boys got to go on a treasure hunt for a gift, which was was quite the adventure, and the video games abounded with Ben the Lego Star Wars Complete Saga for the 360 and Sam receiving Viva Pinata Party Animals for the Wii. Oh, and don't worry about Daddy, he also got several titles to add to his collection. Ben got me a tin of "special cookies" because "I'm so special," which was really cute and Sam picked out a new fountain pen for me because he knows that I write a lot. And, of course, this year's tie dye theme was Mickey shirts, which left me with *very* green hands that I tried (unsuccessfully) to pass off as festive.

And we had *no* problem surpassing last year's grand total of almost 4,000 Legos - this year between the boys we hit 5,633 Legos divided between 12 sets! Yes, we (most notably the grandparents) are keeping those Danes in business. It's right now 7 pm on the 26th and we've assembled all but the 3 biggest sets. Yes, my fingers hurt.

We finished all of the opening before noon this year, I think, which is also a record. We like to take it easy on Christmas morning, opening one gift at a time and enjoying each one as it's being unwrapped. This year we did present opening in three waves, stopping to assemble Legos (Sam) and play Lego Star Wars (Ben) because how can you open all of those great gifts and not take time to play with them?!?

Hope your Christmas was as sweet and memorable and just plain fun as ours was - all the best to you and yours!