Christmas morn

Emma is not a normal kid. She loves her sleep. When we were kids, we always got up before the sun on Christmas morning, ran to the living room to look at everything, yelled for mom and dad to wake up and then we'd sit in front of the fireplace, stockings in hand, waiting for them to come into the living room.

James got up around 7am Christmas morning, and I thought I was dreaming when I saw Bella walking around in my bathroom. Then James noticed something she left on the bathroom floor and was shocked. Not nice to discover unsightly things in the dark, especially not nice to step in them. Since she's a puppy and not completely house broken, she has a large crate that she sleeps in at night. Well, Santa being the comical guy he is, must have left the door to her kennel unlatched and she escaped in the night after we went to bed. I will spare you the gory details, but let's just say, she bombed the house in several places. James had every intention of coming back to bed and I had every intention of staying in bed till Emma woke up, but we had some cleaning to do. Emma didn't get up till about 8am, and she yelled from the living room "Santa brought me a backpack for my DS!" She wasn't excited that Santa had brought her the Nintendo DS she wanted, she was excited about the accessories. Silly kid. She was even more amused with the Bella story, and she said that Santa let her out because he was angry at her and James. They had been plotting to trap him the night before.

Stockings first, of course. She was so excited about everything she got in her stocking. I think stockings are my favorite thing to buy for.

She still had sleepy eyes and was telling us how she just knew Santa would give her neat things in her stocking. Santa really is funny. He gave her a gift card to PetSmart to pick out a hamster for herself and even gave her a nice habitat for it. I guess Santa didn't realize that we already had 2 dogs and 2 cats.
"You tricked me !" That's what she said when she opened the boots. Emma asked for very little this year, but had some very specific items. She wanted the hamster stuff and a DS from Santa and she wanted some winter boots with fur and fuzzy balls on them from us. They were SO hard to find in her size. Even online ! I looked and looked and when I'd find some that were just what she wanted, they would be her size on the display and look like they had been run over. I finally told Emma that she may not get some winter boots because we couldn't find them. She told me not to worry because Santa could find some. Durn ! No pressure ! Then I told her I found some but they were kind of ugly and not really what she wanted. She told me she would take the ugly ones. This kid really wanted some winter boots ! Finally, after a million calls to different stores, I found these boots at the last minute and they were half off. Even better. She was so happy.

Emma stopped halfway through opening presents and looked at us and said "I really am thankful", it was very sweet. Once she was done opening her presents she wanted to call Nonni (my mom) and Noni(James' mom), and tell them about her morning. Or so we thought. She really wanted to tell about Bella being out and she gave out the numerical amount of times the dog had relieved herself in the house. It doesn't take much to amuse a kid. Fine ! We were amused too !

Christmas morning was fun, but it wasn't long before we got busy again. It was time to prepare for Christmas dinner. The whole familia was coming over.