02F5B: Earlier Christmases

When the only children of focus for your Christmas holiday typically have earlier bedtimes, you end up with earlier Christmas celebrations as well. We switched things around even more this year by having the opening of presents before Christmas Eve dinner because we didn't want to drive the two boys crazy waiting too long.

Our Christmas efforts have become very focused on the nephews over the years. It only makes sense - they're the only kids in our core family group, and they're not being raised with the mystical Santa Claus tradition. So they get a LOT of love from the whole family instead, with multiple gifts being the accepted practice. And man, the boys really got a lot of stuff this year, and I'm sure we overstimulated them just with all the presents they had to open. 

We still exchanged gifts among ourselves, but the reactions of the boys were really the main highlight.  I really should have taken videos of my own, but I'm glad that my siblings had set up their cameras to capture some of the best bits.

This is one of our shorter stays in Singapore and the trip is going to come to an abrupt end in about 36 hours. But this night alone made it totally worth it, despite its brevity.