the wonderful 'mess' of christmas.

our christmas was pretty awesome. i was woken up by 5:15 am as usual by little ms. miley, but was able to sleep for a bit longer after she was fed. jessa excitedly woke up at about 7 am and ran out to see papa. now the rule is to not go into the family room until everyone gathers in the living room first to sing 'happy birthday' to Jesus. myself, the hubby, jessa, miley and papa had all gathered in the hallway and decided to sneak into wake grammy up by yelling 'merry christmas!' as we sneakily snuck, she was nowhere to be found. jessa started walking around to the other side of her bed when she popped up to surprise her. this added to the giggles and already present excitement to the morning. we sang beautifully in a cappella (haha) to Jesus, got our coffee, and had one happy little girl with very happy little feet ready to run into the other room.

jessa exclaimed, "let's go open presents!" and darted right towards the tree. she quickly forgot that she had placed her stocking on the sofa for morning surprises. we redirected her excitement back towards the couch and she was amazed at what she saw. all by herself, she said, "thaaank you santa mama!" sometimes her cuteness is just too much. and we think she just might believe that i came down through the "fire", as she likes to call it.
like we expected, miley was content with paper and bows. i have to admit that santa mama was a wee bit tired the previous night and got a few little stocking stuffers mixed up. oops. jessa helped hunny open all of her gifts throughout the day anyway.

we celebrated with 24 family members, with a lasagna dinner and a crazy game of balderdash. wrapping paper, bows, and babies were strewn everywhere. it took at least a half an hour just to pass out the 'mess' of presents crammed under the tree. the gifts literally threw up from under the tree and landed in stacks surrounding it in every direction. up. over. under. everywhere. this is about half of it. gah.
it was most definitely a wonderful mess. miley's first christmas was most definitely memorable. and the light in jessa's eyes was most definitely bright. it was a good good day.