Graham and Julia: Christmas morning, 2013

We had a wonderful, joyful Christmas. Gramma Grace, Lise, our French au pair, and her friend spent Christmas Eve and Christmas day with us...

I was up at 6 to help Santa place gifts under the tree (he always makes such a mess, Santa and his elves!)...Terence helped bring the enormous doll house in from the garage. For once, Julia had not 'discovered' her gift before Christmas...she is a tough one to surprise, she figures things out!

Here are photos of my sleepy heads...opening presents...

On Christmas Eve, I could not get Graham to fall asleep...so I told him that Santa would not come until we were sleeping...Terence took some bells and rang them outside.

I wish I had a photo of Graham's face! He looked surprised, then squeezed his eyes shut and said to me "Mommy, we better go to sleep. I heard Santa!"

sweet.

Still dreaming of Santa

The tree and the gifts

Julia works her sleepy self down the stairs

Looks like Santa drank the milk and ate a little of the cookie we left out. The children's notes to Santa are on the table.

Julia's doll house (thank you, Mothers of the Hill forum! I found this, already assembled, with all of the furniture...and it was even delivered to me, since it didn't fit into my car...)
Terence and I now have a strict "No Assembly" gift rule...2 Christmas's ago, Terence was up at 5 a.m., assembling a battery-operated fire truck for Graham...the fire truck THEN sat in the kitchen for a year, as I was a bit concerned that Graham wouldn't know how to 'drive' it.
Terence also put together a pink kitchen for Julia that year...and a baby sitter put together a 'fire station' for Graham.
We vowed to never again have to assemble things...thus the MOTH forum and Craigslist, where I like to buy things 'used' AKA preassembled!