Some Christmasy Advice From One Who Knows

Because of work schedules and traveling, we celebrated Christmas today, on Christmas Eve. It has been wonderful and for the first time ever, I feel like we really spoiled our kids. I have conflicting feelings about this. But I digress.

Since we've already done our Christmas, I feel inclined to impart some words of wisdom concerning various things I've learned this season.

1. Make sure Mr. Claus is home on Christmas Eve to help Mrs. Claus assemble a gigantic cardboard house right the first time, rather than the fourth time.

2. If you bought your child a FurReal cat or other creepy blinking animal, wrap the box in dark wrapping paper as opposed to white wrapping paper. When wrapped in white wrapping paper, a FurReal cat's motion detector can still detect light and movement and will most definitely "meow" at any given moment, say weeks before Christmas when the children are getting on their shoes to leave for an outing. A blatant and unholy lie will follow: the tale of the living room ghost cat.

3. If your child receives a ink and stamp collection from Santa Claus, do turn your back, then turn back around to find your 9 month old crawling through the opened ink pad, leaving a tiny baby hand tracks behind her all over your living room floor. Though precious looking, they're a bugger to scrub out of the carpet.

4. If you buy your wife an AeroGarden a week before Christmas, do not leave the receipt and order confirmation in the printer's cue to be found by her loveliness the following day when she goes to print off a recipe for marinated mushrooms with blue cheese.

5. If your children are receiving Walkie Talkies, a Busy Ball Popper, an Easy Bake Oven, or anything else that requires odd sized batteries or an 100 watt non-energy efficient light bulb used to bake weird textured treats, I would make sure you have those batteries and light bulbs on hand, otherwise you will be making a trip to the store and hobknobbing with 1,000 of this season's biggest procrastinators.

And last but certainly not least:

6. Do not let Child A put her new Zhu Zhu Pet hamster in Child B's hair. Not only will tears will fall, but also tangled locks of golden hair that will inevitably have to be cut free, with scissors, from the tiny hamster's wheels.

Pictures from this morning's festivities:

The loot.

Can you tell I was excited as they were, coming down the stairs?
Just a tad blurry.

Both Go and I always received a tangerine in the toe of our stocking growing up.
Does anyone else do this?

We play with unwrapped Santa gifts and stockings first,
then eat a big breakfast,
and then open gifts.
Both Go and I grew up with this Christmas schedule,
and now, so do they.
This is from the stocking-segment.

This year's favorite stocking stuffer item.

And now we are playing.

We hope everyone has a merry, merry Christmas.
With lots of love,
Us