It's Snowing

As predicted, and as usual, we woke up too early. My sisters and I were all up by about 6:15, but our mom, who has done this nearly 70 times already, still gets so excited that she was awake by 4:45. The kids got up shortly after 7, and we had to wake Jeff up about 8-ish. He's SO not one of us sometimes!

We start by drinking our coffees while checking out our stockings. Anything in the stocking is fair game, but we still tend to stop and watch each other. And now that we're adults and we help with the stockings, we're able to say things like, "Ooh, Teri--check the bottom of your stocking. I don't think you have everything out yet."

Afterward, we have breakfast, which was absolutely first class delicious! And then we open presents, one person at a time. We started doing that when we didn't have much money as a way to make the day last longer and it's become the standard. The first year I spent Christmas with my ex-husband and his family, I was appalled at the way they all ripped into packages at one time. No one got to see what anyone else got, there were no shared moments of, "Wow, that's beautiful!" or the like, and it was over in 15 minutes. Very anti-climactic and a complete downer for me.

So, as I was saying, we had a fabulous breakfast and settled in for presents. It's good we started our Christmas shopping in July, because not a lot was purchased after I lost my job in October, but we still managed to have a full, exciting, fantastic day.

And as soon as we were done with presents, someone opened the door to put the dogs out and shouted, "It's SNOWING!" Now, 2 hours later, it's still snowing. It's beautiful. It's just perfect.

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