So whats Santa leaving your kids tonight?

[Incorrigible]

Whew!  That basketball arcade for my 5 year old Autistic son took longer than I thought it was going to.

Now I have to work on the Air Hockey table for my 7 year old daughter!

[Judith Anne]

Talk about your times of trial! We never allowed musical instruments at Christmas...including drums.

But I took the week off, and so did the kids, this year, so the grandchildren and I cooked this week...on Monday, we made cupcakes, a double batch, from scratch. Everyone from the 9 yo to the 3 yo helped at every stage...somehow I lost the regular sized cupcake cups, so we had to do the miniatures. More than 6 dozen. Each batch 15 minutes in the oven. All put on a huge platter, and then each kid got a dozen to decorate, with white frosting, sprinkles, chocolate chips, almonds, and colored frosting squiggles. Two dozen accidently got ruined in the process, and had to be eaten, of course. ;-D

On Tuesday, we made homemade bread from scratch and memorized the six essential ingredients (flour, yeast, water, sugar, salt and oil) and added some cheese and Italian spices. Each kid had a bunch to knead, then we let it rise till double, punched it down, and then rolled it out and made a great big braid, fastened the ends together and fashioned a wreath, then put a dough bow and some dough pine cones on it. We put it on a big pizza stone, baked it till it came out of the oven, and then ate half the wreath while it was still hot, with real butter. ;-D

Today, we hard boiled eggs, then enameled them red and green. Then, each kid had six eggs to decorate with glue and little eyes, tiny pom-poms, feet, glitter, and sequins. They turned out adorable! ;-D Some shells cracked, accidently, so those were eaten. We ended up with about 18 eggs on the formal table tonight....

All of us got dressed up in our best, the turkey and stuffing were perfect, we had pickled peppers, salad, the leftovers from the wreath, homemade southern pecan pie, pumpkin soup (made and frozen at Halloween), gravy over new potatoes, ate till we were fit to bust. When the dishes were done, Hub played Christmas carols on the piano, and we set up the camcorder and all sang every Christmas hymn we could think of...then Hub read to us by candlelight the story of the first Christmas from Luke...

The kids got their baths and jammies on, and fell asleep on the living room floor in a nest of pillows, covers and sleeping bags in front of the Christmas tree, with a long tape of the Mormon Tabernacle choir doing Christmas music softly in the background...

We finished wrapping a couple of dozen gifts, and carried them in and put them around the tree...there are so many gifts, so many toys, so much I'm both thrilled and ashamed...Us grownup kids then sat around the dining room table in the dark, with a candle or two lit, and had adult beverages and talked about memories of Christmases past...

Now everyone is asleep, Hub is snoring softly next to me...and I'm here in the dark, granny with her household content and at rest, dreaming sweet and gentle dreams of the glorious morning to come...

I am so full of love for my family, my dear and precious big and little people, so happy with our traditions, our own oasis of light in a darkening world...our deep faith an island in an ocean of scoffers...

Christ, thank You, I love You...

Peace on earth, to men of good will.

[Lando Lincoln]

Marlin Model 1897 Cowboy Guns (.22's) for my twin sons.

Lando

[SamAdams76]

Damn am I up late tonight! Usually I'm in bed by 11 and up by 5. As it is, I'll be up at 5 anyhow as my kids will surely have me up by then. So why am I sitting here writing out this reply when I should be catching my three hours sleep?

I waited until the kids were safely in bed before I started pulling out their gifts from the attic. Got my oldest son a TIVO recorder, some books, a few DVDs including Monty Python's classic "Holy Grail" and a sweater or two. Got my youngest son a couple of massive K-NEX sets including a 1000+ piece roller coaster that threatens to be six feet long when completed. Also a bunch of things that need batteries and some books and DVDs.

We sure do spoil the hell out of our two boys.

So here I sit, typing this out, listening to Christmas music, sipping straight Kahlua out of my Freeper coffee mug (damn the carbs) and watching all the blinking lights of my Christmas tree.

Guess I ought to try to get at least 2 1/2 hours sleep before the kids have me up at 5.

[MediaMole]

His Daddy is such a sucker & went back & bought the guitar today without asking my opinion. I thought we had already decided our nerves couldn't take it.

Get him a headphone amp and you'll never even know he's playing.

[america-rules]

I spent the evening tracking santa with my 5 YO at Norad

What a hoot !

[pollywog]

a siamese kitty , 4 CDs, a gumball machine and $25. cash.She is 12. All other grown children got $$

[kimmie7]

Our (then) 3 year old got one last year from an aunt.....stock up on Advil.

[Incorrigible]

4AM!

Ho! Ho! ZZZzzzzzz

[Falcon4.0]

Thank You, thank you.
Have a Merry Christmas.

[GeronL]

I remember when I was a kid and we guessed what was in the boxes... or tried. One year me and my brother both had these HUGE boxes, and guessing was pretty fun.

Inside we found another box.

Inside we found another box.Inside we found another box. Getting small now.

Inside we found another box, all of them were filled with crumpled newspaper...

Finally we got down to tiny boxes, we both got pocket knives.