Christmas Traditions

Since our kids are just getting to the stage where they can really understand Christmas, there was a lot of talk in our house this year about what kind of traditions we want to establish. You know, those really important details, like:

Where should we put the stockings?

Do we open the stockings before or after presents?

When should we open the presents?

On Christmas Eve he brought up all the presents and got the room ready for the kids while I sat with a baby attached to my chest for FIVE HOURS STRAIGHT...but that is another post entirely...

When said baby finally fell asleep and I got a look at the room, I was surprised to see that each person had their own pile of gifts neatly organized by size. I had just assumed that all the presents would be in one big pile under the tree, and Chloe would pass them out one at a time, most likely while wearing a darling and very photogenic santa hat. Doesn't everyone do it that way?

One thing we had agreed upon was that we wanted the kids to appreciate each gift and not just tear through them as fast as possible. To me, this means you ooh and aah over each one and take a good look at it...then you set it aside for later and move on to the next present.

To my engineer husband this meant that you open every box of Geotrax (of which there were FIVE thanks to Grandma), open up all the packaging in all five boxes of Geotrax, and then set up all of the pieces in all five of the boxes of Geotrax.

Did I mention there were FIVE boxes? And that this had to happen in the middle of the present opening? Do you know how long Chloe and I had to wait to finish opening our presents because Luke and the engineeer were building FIVE boxes of Geotrax?

Let me tell you, there wasn't a whole lot of goodwill to men going on in my heart. Maybe next year we'll get all those important details straight. Because you just don't interrupt the present opening!