Christmas Morning

After a fun Christmas Eve where the kids stayed up a full three and a half hours after their normal bedtime, it was finally Christmas morning in the Ruffo house (aka Bubba & Pap's house). Now, because we are traveling and lugging luggage (hmmm... perhaps that's a hint to the origin of the word "luggage") and presents, we decided to write a letter to Santa and let him know that we would not be home for Christmas. To ease his burden for Christmas Eve, he could skip our house that night and instead bring us gifts belatedly once we returned home. So none of the gifts shown in the next pictures are from Santa. Those are still yet to be delivered!

Once we were home from Aunt Lorraine & Uncle Ralph's house on Christmas Eve, the kids went to bed and we got out all of the presents, laughing a little hysterically at how many there were. (We were tired, stuffed full of food, a couple of us may have been a little drunk - not me - and the sight of all those presents almost caused a case of hysterical giggles.) So we piled them under and around the tree, in front of the coffee table, and on the side of the couch. And shhh... don't tell the kids, but we each opened a couple before heading off to bed, knowing that at exactly 7:00 AM, at least one child would be up and looking for presents!

Here's a cute shot of Chris with the beautiful tree and presents spilling out from underneath it.

As predicted, Dominic was the first one up on Christmas morning. He made a beeline for the family room to check out the presents. After posing for a quick picture, he started stacking presents by the recipient. He loves playing Santa!

While Dominic couldn't wait to open presents, there was a certain cranky little girl who insisted she didn't want presents and pouted her way through breakfast.

Finally we were all ready to open presents - even Francesca. With the exception of a paper cut causing some thankfully-short-lived-hysterics, we had a wonderful Christmas morning! Here are a few more photos from that morning.

Merry Christmas everyone!