Christmas Morning. . .

Christmas morning came very early this year. . .

I usually have to wake the kids up by playing music and making lots of noise while brewing my coffee. I don't think we've started opening gifts before 9:00 a.m. since Gloria was little.

Not the case this year, however. Gloria was hoping for a REALLY special gift so she woke me up at 7 a.m. begging to start opening presents. I understand that. I was always the first one up on Christmas Day as a kid so I was willing to get up and get started. Rob and Zach weren't quite as accommodating, though. We did, finally, start opening around 7:30 but Lucy got to open her gifts first . . .

The kids always open their stocking gifts first. . .

Mrs. Potato Head. . .

I made the mistake of having Zach open a book as his first big gift. We had a difficult time getting him to put it down long enough to open his other presents!

Rob and the kids went all out this year and bought me a bunch of stuff. This blanket was (obviously) one of my favorites!!

Not sure what this is. It was to Gloria from Zach and they seemed to know so I didn't even try to figure it out. . .

I put together a couple of picture frames for Gloria to hang in her room. . .

More fun stuff for me. . .

I've had my eye on this since I found out there was such a thing last summer. It's called a Dog Bone Socket Wrench. I honestly wanted one!!

Gloria will not be happy about me posting this, so I'll state for the record that it was my idea to buy a Barbie. I've given her a Barbie every Christmas for the last 10 years. It's a habit. And it's fun to buy Barbies. . .

And Zach may be too old for Legos but I didn't hear him complain about this gift. . .

Rob gets the prize for the strangest gift. He asked me for metric bolts and phillips head screws in all different sizes. Who does their Christmas shopping at Industrial Hardware?? I do.

He was very happy. . .

Between Rob talking about his nuts and bolts and Zach pointing out interesting facts from his new Star Wars book, Gloria waited and waited for her MAIN gift. . .

She was expecting something BIG. . .

It wasn't big in size but it was exactly what she was hoping for. . .

Zach's main gift was much bigger and he was willing to put the book down long enough to open it up. . .

Guitar Hero, Warriors of Rock for the PS3. . .

It was a good thing we saved the best for last because Gloria didn't pay attention to anything but her phone for the next hour. . .

This is the very first picture she took with her camera phone. I have a feeling there will be many, many more. . .

To say she was happy would be the understatement of the year. . .

The aftermath:

My parent's came over just as we were cleaning up so they could see what the kids unwrapped . . .

Rob was happy to show off his stuff, too. . .

We had a tiny bit of time to look through our loot before heading over to Rob's parent's house. It was kind of hard to pull them away from their stuff. . .

Good thing they had more stuff waiting for them at Grandma's. . .