Christmas is Awesome

It's been a fabulous December.  The Christmas season gets super crazy with work parties and church parties and family parties and endless other festivities.  Of course, I love all of it, so I'm not complaining.  Mostly, I'm just trying to sell you on my excuses for not having written in a long time.

I love everything about Christmas.  There are too many awesome things to talk about all of them.  But, I'll just share a few of my favorites.

It all starts the day after Thanksgiving.  Most of the world loses anything that even resembles sanity.  They crowd into stores, claw each other's faces off and sometimes they save a few dollars.  I, on the other hand, do all of my shopping online.  That means I get to spend time with my good friend, the internet.  I also like to brag to others about how I got it all done in a few hours online, this gives me the satisfaction of being smug and superior.  Who doesn't enjoy that?

After waiting a few days, the packages begin to arrive.  Boxes and boxes of joy come to my house.  I love to get it all under the tree as fast as possible.

There is an important reason that the presents need to get under the tree quickly.  Once they are under the tree, it is important to feel them, shake them, weigh them and do whatever else is necessary to study them and speculate what might be inside.  (But opening them is strictly forbidden.  Don't break the rules, you cheater.)

This game is probably my favorite part about Christmas.  But I learned the hard way a few years ago that when I win the game by properly guessing my gifts, it makes my wife sad.  So, I keep my guesses to myself, and then I can just keep score in my head when I open them.

Then, of course comes Christmas morning.  I get super excited, both to open presents and to watch other people open their presents.  It's kind of the best thing ever.  One important part of the present opening process is that Robyn takes the bows off of the presents and puts them in her hair.

This year, my in-laws surprised me with a pretty awesome present that I didn't even ask for:

I also surprised Robyn by giving her her childhood in a DVD:

There are always good times while opening presents.  Sometimes it's important to build a present fort on top of my sister.

All in all, I love Christmas.  I love family.  I love presents.  I love pie.  We were even blessed with a white Christmas this year.  What more could a guy ask for?