The Christmas Morning Line Up - Tradition Continues

If you follow my blog, you will remember several blog posts about our family tradition of "lining up" before going in to see what Santa or the Easter Bunny brought us. 

Each year we have a "trail" of something. One year it was games, but most years it is some kind of food or candy. Since Princess One's children don't have red dye candy or chocolate due to reactions, I decided to do something different. 

I had a theme for the boys of Dinosaurs, and many of their gifts revolved around those. I made a trail of popcorn cones, mints with no dye, and different types and sizes of dinosaurs. The traditional "trail" leading to the Christmas Presents was a HIT. The kids always get excited when they see the "trail" in the morning and the anticipation of going in to see what they received mounts with the fun of following the "trail." 

The baby had a lizard thing which he didn't release for quite some time as you can see in the pictures. There was a large talking T-rex  which moved with the push of a button and the arms moved and mouth opened and closed when you push down the arms and each child took a turn with that as well as their dad. It did scare the kids a bit when he first had it move but they soon got over the fear of the roar and motion and enjoyed the toy. 

The popcorn and mints were also a hit as you can see by Grand-Prince number one holding something in each picture. I have shared in my other posts on the traditions of "lining up" that we used to have to eat a hard boiled egg and / or a grapefruit before we were allowed to go into see what Santa brought but we opted out of that part of the tradition and ate some of the popcorn before going in to see our treasures. 

I love the last picture on this post as my first daughter is sitting next to her husband with a slight smile on her face. She has always been hard to get to smile on holidays. I was always happy if I could get a slight smirk out of her. I have videos of her about age 14 where I would catch her smiling a half smile and commented on how much she must have liked her gifts as I got a "smirk" out of her. 

She hadn't seen any gifts at this point Christmas morning other than the "trail" of items and I LOVE the slight smile on her lips. It kinda reminds me of the Mona Lisa. That happy contented look that we don't often see in our crazy harrowing world.  

We had a wonderful Christmas morning. I am going to miss this as my clan moves on doing their own thing but I sure am enjoying it while I have it. 
Have a Blessed Day!