A Merry Christmas

I'm going to follow suit with the previous, "You never get it until you have kids" post with - Man, Christmas with kids is the best. Not just kids, but one very inquisitive, bright-eyed toddler who totally gets the Santa thing this year.

The anticipation was great, too. "Missy" the Elf hung out at our house all month long, flying home at night to tell Santa if Riley had been naughty or nice nice that day. Some days, I thought Missy might be on overload, never to return again...other days, she seemed pretty happy.

Riley's wish list was pretty straight forward:
1. Daddy froggy
2. baby turtle
3. Big girl bed

And man, did Santa deliver (with help from Mimi, Papa, Grandma, Grandpa, and JCPenney.com...oh, and Daddy the worker elf).

So there we were, the night before Christmas, after a rocking Christmas Eve party at my parents house, quietly assembling furniture in Riley's room. The elves worked until 3am (actually, this breastfeeding elf went to bed at 2:00 because I knew R2 would be expecting a meal pretty soon) and every minute of preparation was totally worth it.

After Riley tore into every Christmas gift - her smile wide with excitement at each new gift (and I do mean it, she shredded that paper like no ones' business) we asked her, "Did you get everything you wanted from Santa that you asked for?"

"No."

"Why, what did he forget?"

A little sad, "My big girl bed."

"Well, maybe it couldn't fit under the tree...maybe it's in your room."

(Here is where our sneakiness really came into play--- Riley slept in our room the night before and we managed to keep her out of her room all morning)

Cue the wild lady running into the other room.

She couldn't even believe her eyes...and my parents, Kyle, me and Dan, who followed closely behind, were pretty excited too. You will also catch a glimpse of Dan's Amish ways with the window seat that he built and her new pet fish from my parents.