How old are my children.

Riley woke Christmas morning at five am. I heard noises downstairs as he checked the house for his Santa gits. We had decided to have our general presents under the tree in the living room. The presents from me: socks, underwear, Cologne and new shavers. The boys pretty much know what to expect and appreciate the gifts as they have been requesting socks and underwear, all of them, including Tom for a while. I make them wait until Christmas. The underwear and socks get holes in them over the year and it is Mrs. Claus job to replenish and replace. They did get fancy watches from me also that look really cool. The bands were too big for their wrists so I will need to have them go to a jeweler for adjustment.

In the man cave under the other tree were the Santa gifts. The boys had made their wish lists and Tom on Christmas eve had headed out to get them the x box games rated M for mature that I would never buy for them. He also splurged and bought a 32 inch flat screen TV for the basement so we will never have to even hear or see the children as they now have an acceptable TV in the Dungeon as our basement has now been called. Now I don't have to kick them out of my bedroom when they are bounced from the man cave. Their games can go on for hours uninterrupted by my interferences.

Everyone is now expecting me to finish tackling the basement so we can get the teen dungeon set up appropriately. The resistance trainer is still in boxes from the move. In the mean while they have taken over my boudoir and stripped the guest bed in the basement of blankets to wrap up in from the chill of the concrete floor. It is a teen pit. One rule though is all dishes and garbage must be brought up as we do not want the mice to come back. Thankfully with the amount of use that space is now receiving the mice might have a hard time finding a moment to raid without their own interruptions.

While Tom was out shopping Christmas eve, I had the boys set up for our Christmas day party. More boxes were unpacked to bring out the fancy china. I expanded our dinner table to its maximum capacity of 12 seats. I am again grateful to a friend of a friend who sold me eight Hoosier style chairs of similar design to the four that I already had to make a complete blended set of twelve dining chairs. By the time we were done with the table, it glittered with wine glasses and pretty plates. All we would have to do Christmas day is pop the turkey in the oven and fix up the mashed potatoes and vegetable side dishes. Everyone was bringing their favorite side dishes so there would be plenty to eat.

The turkey had been in the cooler in the garage all week on ice. I could tell it was safe as the ice hadn't melted when I went to replenish it. 23 pounds, just right for 16 people including my boys and their friends and parents.

Riley leaned over my side of the bed at six am. He was pretending to get the dog from between Tom and me, to let the dog out to go potty. He has never voluntarily gotten the dog to let him out. Tom told Riley that his father had to be fed first before getting up and going downstairs. He wanted breakfast in bed. I just wanted another couple of hours sleep. Tom had come to bed around 1:30 am all wound up from wrapping his gifts and wanted to chat. He wanted me to try and guess what he had bought everyone. I had been sound asleep for hours until then. Then waking to the pitter pounding of a teen age boy trying to be quiet at 5:00 am, I looked at the clock to confirm the time.

Riley was so excited to get us up he went downstairs to cook his favorite breakfast of waffles with syrup, forgetting that Tom doesn't doesn't do sweets or waffle. Riley brought up the plate only to be told by his father to go make him some eggs. Riley left the waffles next to my side of the bed and headed downstairs to make eggs and toast. When it arrived Tom commented to me that Riley even melted the butter on the toast which was a pleasant surprise from how I make his breakfast toast. Of course Riley is sent back downstairs to bring up the coffee next.

By this time I have seen the light. Not the real light as its still dark outside, but I was not going to get to sleep in. I jump in the shower. Riley has woken Trevor up about by this time. Everyone is waiting for me. I am thinking we can have presents opened in a short amount of time and I can get a short nap in before I really have to begin the day. Tom is of the same plan. Presents go in a whoosh. Everyone is happy.

Tom thought I was going to get him an electric fireplace, but I knew we were getting gas this year so I didn't see the point. I bought him a fridge for his man cave. There is a counter with a void where a fridge is supposed to go. I thought it was an obvious gift to complete his room. He loved it.

The other gift I gave Tom was two working remotes for the car garage door. He had spent a couple of hours trying to get one to work when the weather had been nicer, but couldn't figure the code out. He wants to park all the cars inside and we can with the three bay garage. I hired a garage door guy to come out and fix the garage door for remotes, then kept it secret from Tom. $46 house call and $38 for each remote. The guy couldn't fix the wall mounted code box so I had him remove it since it was ugly and a distraction. He said the box was too old and was past saving. They get weathered and stop working after a while. A new wall box would not code in with the old garage door we had which worked just fine. To put in a whole new system would run $300. I was happy with what we had, especially now that we had remotes that worked. The house came with no remotes. I am slowly ticking off the "to do" list. Tom loved his gift.

I had asked Tom to be frugal and he was somewhat. I wish he hadn't bought every game on the boy's lists, but he had restrained himself by not buying anything really over the top. He had been thinking a kindle or a nook or an I pad, but decided against them in the end. Riley had said he likes the real books and so do we. The price of the I pad at $500 each discouraged that purchase.

Tom bought me one gift, the perfect gift. Just one gift but it was something I had been wanting that he had originally vetoed in the past. I know you will laugh, but I was really pleased as it truly was something we had been discussing and he had said no. Now he was letting me have my way. He bought me a doggy door for Bucky. He had originally not wanted to put a hole in the house. We have no sliders, just french doors. Full glass windows that can't be adjusted to accommodate a doggy door. This is a fancy doggy door with special extensions to go through six inch walls with insulation and two flaps to keep the heat in the house.

Bucky, bless him, had decided that if we weren't going to let him out regularly enough, then he would poop on the rug in front of the door in Tom's man cave. In the dark, Tom kept stepping in it and walking all over his beautiful new wood floors. If he was wearing shoes he wouldn't even realize he had done it until later. I couldn't help smiling as Tom sitting next to me, tells me that he just couldn't stand stepping in the poop anymore. Tom told me that he wants to install the door himself to make sure it goes in properly.

He asked me how much the fridge cost and laughed because this fancy doggy door cost only a little less than the brand new mini fridge.

I had also gone on line and ordered some books on financial history that Tom likes to read. They turned out to be spot on. Riley also picked a couple out that were a hit for his father. Trevor had a gift already for his Dad, a brilliant find in itself. He gave his father a real Charlie Brown tree with Linus' blanket, in a wrapped box in honor of Tom's last year's tree pick. Tom loved it.

A few years ago Tom had a talk with Trevor and Riley about when someone hassles you, you need to have a good verbal come back, something smart and snazzy, maybe with a zing, that will show that you are smart and yet perhaps break up a fight or tension without violence. Trevor has taken that conversation to heart and become quite the comedian. He has his own style and the Charlie Brown Tree was just another moment when he showed his comic brilliance to his father.

Unwrapping the gifts took very little time. The boys gabbed the new TV and immediately headed to the dungeon to plug it in and start playing their new games. I heard the scrape and movement of furniture. Thus was the end of my private boudoir and the beginning of the teen cave.

I am now seriously motivated to get that basement cleaned up and quickly, so I can have my space back and move the boys into their space. We bought a 5000 square foot house, I thought that there would be no way we would use all that space, but we do use every inch and are now on a mission to make the unfinished areas livable.

I was able to crawl back in bed for a couple more hours of sleep with Tom. I woke first and finished puttering around the beautifully set table and checking the number of serving bowls needed for the side dishes. Tom had said the turkey needed to go in at 11:00 am. I went up to roust him from his sound sleep so he could prepare and stuff the bird. It was a lovely fun and relaxing morning.