My mom woke us up the next morning with all the excitement she had had when I was a kid. Maybe she was nostalgic or maybe she was enthused by having all her children under one roof again, but either way it was contagious. Caleb and I romped down the stairs in our pajamas and joined Dad and Ryan as we waited for Eliza and Greg. It wasn’t like my childhood when the living room was flooded with all the presents my siblings and I had demanded after seeing them on the TV, but with seven of us buying and receiving gifts, there was a sizeable stack under the tree.
We started with stockings, as per usual. Caleb and I had snuck in some of our remaining AA batteries into everyone else’s the previous day when everyone was distracted. They had gone unnoticed as Mom and Dad filled the stockings with c
