We spent Christmas Eve with Ben's family, as is tradition. His parents are in town from Naples, so we kicked the celebration off with a festive Benihana visit.
Never too cool for the hats.
The kids are truly at the perfect hibachi humor age.
I
do fried rice heart Benihana.
Also Ben's mom got me this genius pillow, and I love it.
Then we went to Ben's grandma's house, which Ben has been doing his entire life, and I have been doing for at least 17 or so years.
We got home around 11 pm, and Ben and I finally fell into bed around 1.
We woke up BEFORE SIX to the sound of scampering feet and kids checking out the tree. We ignored them until 7 when we found them all wearing the new hats from their stockings (the stockings that Santa delivers to their rooms because he is a freaking GENIUS), and then we spent like 2 hours opening gifts.
We made them go one at a time, obvi, and we mixed it up each round. Sometimes they passed out to each other, sometimes they picked their own, sometimes we picked. It was super fun. We paused a lot to just enjoy the gifts and each other and everyone's reactions to the gifts and also to clear up wrapping paper. It was magical.
Finally, at the end, we asked them to choose their favorite gift:
This was mine!!
Also, Ben and I are still working on finding our own Christmas morning rhythm. Like, we want to open gifts with each other, but we also don’t really want the kids all up in our grills. We're working on it. Last year, we did them super early. This year, we waited until the kids were occupied. Some years, we have done them the night before. Other times, we add ourselves into the order. I think the whole thing would be easier if we had fewer kids or if we weren't such present-loving babies ourselves.
Cooper spent the rest of the day hover boarding.
Except when we were playing board games.
Buddy the Elf went right to work on his Legos.
And we ended with a delicious dinner.
And now? THERE ARE TURKEY SANDWICHES.
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