First Day of Christmas: 2021

I took the first picture of Christmas Day when Zeke came down much earlier than he was supposed to. I'd finished all the stockings, presents, and cookies, but I hadn't yet finished cleaning the house, so I imprisoned him in the library while I finished up. He didn't seem to mind.



A few hours later, the whole house was awake!

For the last couple of years, I've made strata in addition to the once-a-year sugar cereal offering, so we only put a dent in this beautiful barricade. It's funny, but because it rarely seems like a good idea to pump my family full of crispy, sugar air for breakfast, we still have one box* of Christmas sugar cereal left in the basement! (*Update: We just opened it last week, right before Thanksgiving. It was pretty stale.)

We do not have any cookies leftover from last year, however. 

Aidan asked for a picture with his cookie counterpart before he took a bite...

Ransom's was nearly life-size.

This was the day that Ransom discovered with great delight that he could climb on the coffee table. It only took him a couple of weeks before he learned he could jump from the coffee table to the couch, but since he was too young to really jump, it ended up being more of an aerial flop from one place to another.  

My favorite part of the gift-giving is always stocking-upending and watching the children open their gifts from each other. This year, we did a "Secret Smurf" drawing of names, so the Smurfs all opened their presents from each other.

Speaking of that Soozy-doozy....

For Mom Owen: The boys were pretending they didn't know what these gifts were, mostly to avoid disappointment in case the nerf-gun-shaped packages turned out to be sweaters shaped like nerf guns, instead, but, look! No disappointment at all. They were ecstatic.

Ransom, who adores nutcrackers almost as much as his creepy mama, got a miniature nutcracker of his very own. 

Also for Mom Owen: we relaxed for the greater part of the day and didn't open most of your gifts until an hour before company arrived that evening.  Behold the staggering pile of wrapping paper that resulted!