Christmas... in Texas

So, Saturday morning was "Christmas morning" here in the Texas Ham house! And, let me tell you... it started EARLY!

We had put the kids to bed the night before telling them that Santa knew they weren't going to be in their own house on Christmas morning, so he had arranged to come early & give them their presents. Well, Austin told me, "Mom, I'm going to wake up really early in the morning to open my presents". Coming from a child who usually wakes up at 8:00-8:30 each morning, I expected that meant 7:00. WRONG!!!

At 4:30am, Austin comes running into our room telling us that Santa had been there & left presents for him & Kaylee. I was so confused as to why it was 4:30 & we were being woken up. (I had to get up at 5:00 to go run 8 miles with my running group, so that extra 30 minutes of sleep was very precious at that time...) Justin said, "Yeah, let's get up & open presents!". WHAT?!? Did I miss something?!? Open presents at 4:30 in the morning... and without Kaylee?! I told him we needed to wait until Kaylee was up, and Austin quickly had the idea that he could go wake her up. Wrong again...

The next 30 minutes involved Justin trying to put Austin to bed, and then my alarm going off to run, and putting Austin back to bed myself. He apparently never went back to sleep... and once I got home from running at 7:45, he was there opening the door for me. We quickly went in to wake Kaylee up, and began opening stockings & presents...

Our awesome kids got Justin some much-needed socks...

Santa brought Kaylee (with her crazy morning hair) a "Fur Real" duck. You feed it a bottle & it quacks, sucks on the bottle & swallows. She loves this thing!!

We got Austin a new pair of Crocs (an annual Christmas tradition). This year, he wanted Realtree Camo crocs... so here he is with them! (So proud!)

Kaylee picked out a Toy Story puzzle for him. He quickly hugged her & said, "I've always wanted one of these!"

I was videoing the rest of the time, so didn't get pictures, but Santa brought Austin a new Woody doll (from "Toy Story") with a working pull string. His current Woody's pull string broke a few months ago & he doesn't talk anymore, so that's all he wanted for Christmas... and Santa delivered!!

There are no pictures of me because after running 8 miles in the cold drizzle that we had on Saturday morning, there wasn't any way I was letting someone snap pictures of me!! Regardless, we had a great time opening presents & now the kids are already looking forward to more presents at both grandparents' houses within the next couple of weeks...