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Gigi was eager to get to bed on Christmas Eve so that Santa could work his magic, and he did not disappoint. Gigi was the first one up, so she dug into her stocking while we waited for the rest of the family to awaken. This is the first photo I took because before this, Gigi had walked down naked in search of a change of underpants. There was a spectacular moment where she discovered the tree filled with presents and stared at it in awe, completely nude. Thankfully, Heather sent these awesome princess pajamas so the rest of the day was much more elegant.

By the way, Stephanie bought me a new camera lens for Christmas. I did not magically get better at photography. Before this, all my photos were taken with this Elmo camera, which I have now handed down to Catie.

Gigi was really looking forward to Christmas this year. She really enjoyed it.

This is Gigi on her new princess bike. (And Cate, balancing precariously on an inchworm.)

Cate takes a break to do some homework.

Gigi draws a snowman on her new chalk board. She’s recently started pretending to be a teacher, so this will come in handy. It took me a few hours to figure out why Teacher Gigi was calling me Susan, but I finally figured out that Susan is the name of one of the teacher’s assistants at school. Still, I would prefer if you don’t call me Susan.

Gigi’s first Barbie. She saw Santa in person and surprised us a bit by asking for one. She’s actually been much happier with the huge collection of Disney Princess dolls from the Magyars, but Santa delivered this one just to be sure.

We all love puzzles. In fact, the reason Stephanie and I are married is that the first time Stephanie met my dad, he made a point of telling her that when I was a kid, I was very good at puzzles and therefore smart and worth having a relationship with. All of this paid off, and now we have two kids of our own, who are also very good at puzzles.

Gigi colors her own puzzle, taking her mastery of the form to a whole new level.

This is the chameleon from Tangled. I think his name is Pascale.

I have read this book about twenty times so far. It’s called “Children Make Terrible Pets” and every word of it is true.

There were so many presents strewn about that we made Catie put on a helmet.

Who even knows what this is? Hurry up, Cate, everybody is waiting for you!

Soon we will train Catie to carve her own puzzles out of balsa wood.

Catie drove Gigi crazy by taking her time opening her gifts and enjoying each one before moving on. This is not how Christmas morning is supposed to be.