Someone asked me the other day what our home looked like on Christmas Eve, with presents under the tree and stockings stuffed. “It must look magical!” she said. Yes, pretty close. The sun was just coming up when I snapped this picture of the tree and stockings. We had quite a good Christmas Day. All the kids knew and understood that nothing would happen before 7 AM. Sebastian awoke at 6:30 AM with Jasper not far behind him. I parked them in front of the TV in the playroom with half a chocolate pop-tart each (chocolate pop-tarts was a specific request from Sebastian for Christmas morning). Carys awoke fifteen minutes later. The movie and sugar fix kept the kids occupied until 7:30 AM when Sela finally got up. The extra sleep for Sela was a real blessing because she was building quite a nasty sleep debt = grumpy. The rest of the day went very well. The kids were quite well behaved and reasonably quiet considering the fact they had lots to excite them. Midday we went to some friends’ home on the Gold Coast of Hong Kong (Kowloon side) for an afternoon Christmas brunch. (There were six adults and nine kids.) We ended up staying until 8:30 PM, since everyone was having such a great time and the kids well behaved. We got home about 9:15 PM and needless to say, it took no time for the kids to fall asleep.