Stockings!

Christmas morning started awfully early. I can't even remember how early exactly. But pretty sure it was not much past 6 am that the big boys were up. Which meant I had to get up because I didn't want to miss any of them opening their stockings!! They are allowed to open them as soon as they get up. This is how I found them downstairs:

Jacob "helped" me with my stocking - he is such a sweet boy.

David got up after a little bit and got into his stocking...

...and then Caleb joined us a little after 7 am. He wasn't totally sure what was going on...

...but got really excited when he found Nerds in his stocking...and I let him eat them!!

New hat and mittens...

New toothbrushes...

Then we needed a little bit of sugar to keep us going, so we broke out the Christmas donuts! This buys me some time to get up and going before making our big Christmas breakfast...

Miss Callie woke up around 8 and came down to all the fun!

VERY excited about her snowman donut!

Opening her stocking (filled with many of the same things that I TOTALLY remember getting in my stocking every year!)

Mom put two of those magic baby bottles in her stocking :)

Nail polish - a MUST!

Working on the code...and watching the HEX bugs that Kelli sent all the boys :)

I had told them if they couldn't crack "the code", we were going to have to send all of Gramps' presents back! (Gramps and Rita collaborated with us this year - so all of our presents & my Dad's presents to the kids were identified with the same code). After MUCH help, Jacob finally got it! :)

The boys read us the Christmas story - it was special hearing Jacob read part of it to us this year!

We had a wonderful Christmas breakfast (real food - not just donuts), Mom opened her stocking (I was forbidden from taking any pictures of that), then she and I got dressed. The kids, meanwhile, were going totally bananas. They were DYING and ready to get to the presents. I, however, had things (like a shower) that I knew I had to get done. Opening presents with this many people in a big family like ours was going to take a while. I had to be prepared...I remember looking at my mom a few times and saying "is it bad to want to call off Christmas morning and send kids to their rooms? :)" David empathized with the kids - remembered that feeling of "it's taking FOREVER" and we finally were ready to get started!