This is why other countries hate us

As I predicted, there was just so much. This is what the tree looked like on Christmas Eve before we left for church. You would have thought that we were storing gifts for the whole town by the sight of the tree.

This picture doesn't even show all of the gifts. I couldn't actually get a shot of all of the presents because there were just too many of them. (Notice that Tina has a Santa hat on the top of her tree rather than an Angel or a star. She is going to have some explaining to do, is all I'm saying. I pray for her soul.)

This was just Savannah's pile, which is really surprising considering her rank in that house. Poor thing. Natalie teased that they had to overcompensate with presents because Savannah takes so much crap from them all year.

This is what a room looks like after 6 kids rip through their gifts. People can get lost, especially little ones. It is a dangerous world. And pets? Pets don't stand a chance.
Especially little rat dogs like this one. Poor little Lucky was scared to death. I don't think he quit shaking for 4 days.

The kids had so much fun opening gifts. Annabelle was probably the cutest because she loved EVERYTHING she opened. It was all her FAVORITE and she would thank us before she even finished opening the gifts. She would feverishly rip through the paper, hug the gift and thank us so much and jump up and down (sometimes there was screaming!). And then just as fast as she did that she would throw the gift down and grab another one and open it with just as much gusto as the one before. I believe she enjoyed the act of unwrapping just as much as she loved each gift.

Bella with her Zhu Zhu pet.

Natalie, a teenager now, showed much more decorum when she was opening her gifts. She sort of sat off in her own corner, perched high enough to see everyone else but outside of the circle that the rest of the group was in, and quietly opened her things by herself. This is a sparkly scarf I found on Etsy. Emma got a black one just like it.

Here we have Avery showing off her new doll with 209 pieces. I think I have stepped on the hard plastic outfits for this doll 5 times now. Every time I step on something I wonder why my sister in law hates me so much. Then I remember that she is probably just getting me back for blogging about her.
Jack can't get enough of Yo Gabba Gabba. They don't have Nick Jr. on the cable system in my brother's area so Jack had to go without watching the show for 8 days. Every day he would look up at me with sad eyes and say, "Gabba?" in the sweetest little voice. And every day I had to tell him that there was no Gabba in Illinois. (I know they make DVDs of Yo Gabba Gabba but they are surprisingly hard to find in the stores.)

In the end, the greatest gift was seeing the smiles on the kid's faces. They had so much fun unwrapping presents and "helping" the adults open gifts. Avery and Bella were at a really fun age for Christmas this year.

So other countries can hate us all they want for having too many Christmas gifts. It is always an embarrassment of riches and I'm sure a lot of these toys will make their way to the bottom of the toy box by the end of the year. But on this night, watching everyone with smiles glued on their faces makes it all worth it.

Besides, with quality gifts like this one, how could anyone deny us the joy of overspending?