We had our family Christmas this morning, since we're at my parents on Christmas morning. Cathie and I were woken up by Madeline this morning at 8am, which isn't too shabby as far as sleeping in goes around Christmas time. We woke Emily and Nate up and then headed downstairs to see if Santa Claus had come - lo and behold, he had. When it was Emily's turn to open her present, she wanted to play with it immediately, and had no interest in opening anything else. She sat there playing with her Discovery Toys "Little People" Noah's Ark, in her own little world. How's that for contentment? Ten minutes later, after the kids finished opening their gifts, Emily decided she would take a turn. The kids loved their gifts, and it was fun watching them scream with excitement at what they'd gotten. Maddie and Nate were both really excited about what they'd gotten each other, and described in detail to each other how they came to the decision of what to buy for the other.

Cathie always gets me the most thoughtful gifts, which can be tough to buy for someone like me, who picks up what he wants, when he wants it. One of the coolest was a turkey deep fryer - imagine having boiling oil, propane fuel and fire all involved in cooking! It doesn't get more dangerous than that. Selfishly, I got Cathie a new Alarm Clock that sets itself automatically. This means no more AM/PM confusion when setting it and no more setting it ahead by 15 minutes so you can hit the snooze alarm twice; that logic never made sense to me. I also took ten pictures that I'd taken, touched them up, converted them to black and white and framed them as part of a display I made for Cathie. Out of all the gifts I got her, this one probalby meant the most to me as the giver because it was something I'd created instead of bought.