Christmas in Kentucky

Christmas Eve: December 23, 2008Santa was one smart fella this year. He got our email we sent to him and made good on his promise to bring Christmas a day early to Kentucky and then leave a few presents for the kids to open in Utah on Christmas morning. He spoiled us and then some! This was the first time ever we had part of Christmas in Kentucky. We have always flown to Utah for Christmas and had him deliver our gifts there. Rich had to work on December 24th so we had to change our plans a bit. And no one seemed to mind.I finally had a reason to buy Christmas stockings for everyone and they boys were so excited to see what he would fill them with.Brynn helped put out cookies for Santa and carrots for the reindeer.Santa's sleigh seemed to have tipped over in our living room and left a pile of presents!The boys were up early. Very early. 5 AM. Did I mention we had to fly to Utah that night and land at 12 PM MST? That is 2 AM EST. Yes, we were VERY tired when we finally got there.A little breakfast to kill time until Rich agreed to come down.The boys woke up the girls (I wasn't pleased by this....) and they quickly began opening their gifts.New princess shoes. (She was SO excited that she had to take of all her clothes to try them on.)Brynn rushed upstairs and got dressed all by herself. She is modeling her new shoes and holding her new Webkinz dog and Tinkerbell Build-A-Bear.Kaitlyn loved her new Sleeping Beauty doll set, complete with "hers daddy." (aka: Prince Phillip)It was hard to get the kids to wait to open their presents. They just wanted to rush right into, and Rich was still asleep upstairs. We started with a few small gifts first that were found in their stockings.

Once Dad was awake, it was a mad house of wrapping paper and boxes.

Josh and Matt check out their new DS game.

Kaitlyn was thrilled with her Snow White barbie and Dora doll.

We had to watch Brynn. She would open ANY present that was near her, even if it didn't have a big "B" on it.

Her new Belle doll set

Matt with his new Star Wars sets and Josh and Trey with their new Nintendo DS.

Josh loves clothes and immediately tried on this new Nike sweatshirt Santa left him.Rich was the expert at getting the toys out of the boxes. He had to put in a full day of work before we flew out ot Utah that night. No break, even on our early Christmas morning on the 24th.

And the girls loved this new doll port-a-crib. The only bad part was that Santa only left ONE to share. Bad idea. After Rich left we got dressed, cleaned up the house and ran to Wal-mart and got another doll bed and trade's Josh' bat for a shorter one at Dick's. It was awesome to do our returns while the rest of the frantic shoppers were still buying their gifts. Huge perk for celebrating a tiny bit early!