Christmas Day

Christmas Eve night was horrible with wind and blowing snow. All night long I heard the lights banging on the side of the house and I wondered if the trees were all going to fall down. It blew so hard it flipped open 1/2 of our hot tub cover and blew off the top of one of our Birch trees!
When I went downstairs to check on the kids at 6:30 a.m. Zach was up watching T.V. and all the other girls were asleep. Hannah had no way of knowing what time it was in the girl's room and Melissa could sleep until noon. We assembled them downstairs and tired not to tease them too much this year. Allie and Abby came upstairs first and Allie found a doll that ironically is also named Ally. Abby was excited to see an art easel from Santa and he even left a personal note on it! Rachel was dumbfounded to see a stand alone Karaoke machine with two microphones. Hannah and Melissa got digital camera's that takes pictures and shoot video. Zach got a new Kodak cell phone.
We took our time opening up each gift. We enjoyed watching the thrill and excitement on each of the kid's faces as they discovered new things. Alan spoiled me!
The rest of the day we played games, watched Narina 2, and opened all of those ties on all of the little girl's toys. The kids were all very grateful for what they got and there were no sad faces.
Some funny things of the day.
*Alan was in charge of getting Zach something this year. He bought him two tickets to a Jazz game in January and put them in a John Bytheway CD. I told Zach before I gave him the present that this was his last one and that it was pretty exciting. Zach opened up the present with great anticipation and his face fell when he saw the CD. We told him to open up the CD so we could listen to it and the tickets fell out and he was still totally clueless! He was getting a little bit irritated and we told him to throw the wrapping over the couch. He gathered up the tickets and was getting ready to crumple them up when we stopped him and told him to take a look at what was in his hands. He was completely surprised!
*Allie was grumpy all day long. She wanted no one to touch her things. It was pretty much her way or the highway the whole day!
*Abby drew and drew on her art easel. Who knew she would have so much fun with it. She said that Santa gave it to her because he knew that she wanted to be an artist when she grew up.
*Melissa got a few surprises but she mostly knew everything that she got because she picked it out.
*Hannah snapped pictures all day. She loves her new camera!
*We all had fun playing with Rachel's Kareokee machine. She is quite the singer!
*My most favorite gift that we got for the family was Wii Fit. I have had so much fun working out with it. I probably will use it the most but the girls can still beat me in hula-hooping! Alan even got on it for a little bit he has great skill in the balance games. Who knew that it would be so much fun!
We missed my mom and dad being with us but with the weather and my dad's never ending stomach flu they elected to stay home. We got to visit briefly with Jane and Leon in Chile via computer. Technology is just so amazing!
The last two pictures are our pile of Christmas paper and the quarter-sized snowflakes that were falling outside.
We hope all of you had a great Christmas as well. Rachel has already pointed out that we have 363 days until NEXT Christmas!