Christmas morning started when Emma burst into our room yelling “Mommy, Daddy, Santa has been here! Santa has been here”. She was so excited! We got up and went out to the Christmas tree while she looked at all her goodies. Scott went in and woke up Ian. He told him that Santa had come. Ian looked at Scott and said OK and rolled over and went back to sleep! He slept for another 5 minutes or so, and then he came out. It took him a while to wake up. He checked out his gifts, but he wasn’t really thrilled with anything, until he saw his “shoot gun”. He got a little gun that shoots round foam disks. He played with it all morning. Actually all the guys loved it. My dad was shooting it at Ian, and then Bryan and Hayes had a turn shooting it too.

We ate our normal souffle breakfast. When we first started coming to Maui, we used to go to the Gorman’s for souffle. When our groups started getting bigger, it was just too hard to all get together. We started doing it ourselves. It just isn’t Christmas morning for me if we don’t have souffle. I think it is one of my all time favorite dishes!

Another thing we usually do on Christmas is go to the beach. We did that too. Bryan, Hayes, Scott, and I went to the beach with Ian and Nora. Emma didn’t want to leave her gifts, so she stayed home with Nana It was not the greatest beach day. The beach is still really dirty from all of the rainstorms earlier in the month. There were tons of logs and sticks everywhere, and it was really muddy. Plus, it was really windy and the waves were blown out so Bryan and Scott couldn’t body surf. Nora loved the ocean. She had such a great time running, and falling, at the edge of the water. I was surprised she loved it so much! We stayed for a while, and then decided to go back to the condo to go in the pool.

We spent Christmas night at the Gorman’s house. We had a great dinner on their deck. It was a really nice Christmas in Maui!