Sorry I am just getting to this. It has been a hectic few days at the grocery store, as you could imagine. Wow this is gonna be tuff.
1. My mom and dad always struggled with waiting for Christmas day to come. Many, many times we would open all of our presents before Christmas and have nothing to open on Christmas day. I know that sounds crazy to some people.
2. Many, many times we would open everything, everything on Christmas eve and then stay up half the night playing with all of our toys and stuff. Then we would be so tired on Christmas day.
3. One of my favorite Christmas presents I got when I was little was a Skeletor Castle from the He-Man Series. The funny thing is that I actually loved using it for a boat and putting all my men in it and pretending that my floor was a huge ocean and they were trapped on this boat in the middle of the ocean with sea monsters all around. :-)
4. The present I remember most since Bonnie and I have been married is when I got Final Fantasy 7 for the Playstation. I still think it is quite possibly the most perfect RPG game ever made for a console.
5. These days Bonnie and I like to let the kids open 1 present on Christmas eve. It has been pajamas or slippers or blankets. Stuff like that. The kids love the pajama thing and they have come to expect it.
6. Then we always go out on Christmas Eve night and drive around to look at lights. This originally started out as a way to get the little ones tired enough to go to bed and now it is just tradition.
7. I will admit too, that I don't think the kids have ever woke us up on Christmas day. I always wake them up between 4-5 AM.
8. We always like to read or tell the Christmas story and have a prayer before we go in and open presents. Last year we did hot cocoa while we read the Christmas story before we went in. That went over really well so we are going to do that again this year.
9. Santa always leaves his present for the kids right next to there stockings unwrapped. This has been interesting in the past when girls get different things and think that something is theirs when it is for one of the other girls. We have to guide them to there right stockings sometimes :-)
10. We always put on Roger Whittaker while we decorate the tree. The kids always want to hear Darcy the Dragon as soon as we break out the Christmas lights. It would not be the same without him at this point.
11. After we open the presents and play for awhile we like to have a good breakfast, since this is the only meal of the day pretty much. The rest of the day is snacking > Mostly Chocolate :-)
12. We also like to hand out the presents one at a time so we get to see what each kid is getting and have fun with the opening.