Boxing Day

Aaron and I are both careful present-openers. I come from a family who respects beatiful wrapping paper, while Aaron is a man alone in a large group of gift-wrap tearers. Zeke barely has the patience to unwrap a gift, let alone do it carefully, so we encourage him to rip his paper (for now anyway, he can decide his own gift-opening philosophy as he grows older). He does really well but is so easily distracted by the toy he just received that it's hard to get him to move on to the next gift. He's probably thinking 'Don't interrupt me to rip some more paper; I'm busy with this cool thing.' Yesterday morning, the first things he saw were the box of legos we got him and the toy tool bench that Grandma and Grandpa Loertscher bought for their house. Zeke was so excited about these new toys that it took all day to get him to open his other gifts.

While we were with Grandma and Grandpa Carlile, Dynna gave Zeke a stack of three wrapped gifts. Zeke was on my lap and we started one of them. He tore into it with gusto, pulled open the box, ripped out the tissue paper, held onto the clothes inside long enough to take a picture, tossed them in Aaron's general direction, and picked up the next package to start all over again: rip, open, pull, picture, toss, repeat. When it was over I was out of breath and surrounded by wrapping paper and boxes. The clothes were cute (from what I saw of them) and it was really quite a rush -- we've never had the free-for-all Christmas morning where everyone opens gifts as fast as they can, all at the same time. Exciting, yet a bit overwhelming.

We had a fabulous Christmas this year and appreciate our generous family and friends who have given us so many great gifts.