Merry Christmas (a few days early!)

Because we travel for the holidays, we have discovered that it is impossible to bring all the children's gifts with us. Some are just too large! So today we had an early Christmas where the kids got their presents from Mommy and Daddy (since Santa doesn't come until the 25th!) and Daddy and I exchanged our gifts.

The before shot

Tater exploring her "vet station" (and Bruiser having meltdown #2 for the day!)

Sassy "washing" her hands at the play sink Daddy built.

Sassy opening her dolls to go with her wooden doll house

Bruiser playing with his wooden castle

Sassy and Bruiser opening their gifts from Tater (that she picked out herself!)

(Oh, and Bruiser recovering from meltdown #3)

Daddy opening his gift from me

Daddy and Tater trying to figure out what the gift is!
(Daddy, who is a huge Monty Python fan, will be going to see Spamalot in April!)

I should have taken a picture of how the living room looks now! I can only imagine Christmas morning...today ended with only one bag of trash! But there was lots of great playing, a bit of trouble with sharing, but some amazing imaginative play!

It was especially interesting to watch Bruiser experience the event. He really struggled with others opening gifts and it not being all about him. We need to have LOTS of conversations about taking turns and sharing between now and Christmas day...or the whole day might result in tons of tears (well, it might anyway, but at least we'll have tried!).