When do you let the dc's open presents? all at once or spread them out during the day?

[Marne]

We are going to my dads house christmas day but will be spending a few hours at home in the morning (going to my dads around 11am), usually i would let the dd's open their presents after breakfast or before, they get quite a lot to open (mainly small things/tat but quite a lot of it), its going to be a bit of a rush as they will need to open presents and get ready to go to grandads so wont have a huge amount of time to play with their new toys, then we will be going over to my dads where dads partner has apparently gone OTT with presents so they will be opening another load before lunch. I'm thinking it will be a bit too much and they wont apreciate what they have got. Should we keep some back for the evening or even boxing day?

How do you do things? Open them all in the morning or spread them out over the day or 2 days?

I am soooooo 'with' Roman Christingle!!

ooh and you sleepy spaniel - how come I didnt see yours? Love the mad fest!! One day of the year n all that!

We spread them over several days - lasting almost a week.

24th: Christmas eve pjs and present to start Christmas off.

25th: FC presents in the morning before breakfast
Presents from us mid morning. Then over to my parents.
Presents from my parents just before lunch.
Small stocking after lunch

26th: Presents from other people

27th: Presents from ILs and my extended family

Then most days, we meet up with family friends and swap gifts for the children. So they usually get one present each day (sometimes it is just a small token tree present)

Until New Years day when the tree comes down and Christmas ends.

We are going to my mil's for christmas dinner at about 1ish, but we have to pick my ds1 up from his dads at 10am. We are going to come home and do santa presents then i'm going to let the kids play with these while i do the continental breakfast and my dh takes our dogs for a very long walk. When he gets back since he is present mad he wants the kids and us to open the presents under the tree. After that we will be going to my mil's and the kids will have even more pressies. Then on boxing day we are going to my mums and yes you guessed it even more gifts. Think i may need a bigger house lol.
However next year because its my exs turn to have ds1 we will have 2 xmases. One on christmas with my ds2 and one the following sunday / monday for both of them. On xmas day my ds2 will just get santa presents (so i don't have to buy him 2 lots of tree presents) and then presents from my dh's family who we will be visiting. The following sunday night will constitute xmas eve and the kids will be allowed to open tree presents (which is what we did as kids) and then santa will come on again sunday night and they will get santa presents on the monday as well as presents from my family who we will be visiting.

Our day is based on what I did as a child: stockings first thing, before breakfast, then tree presents after lunch.

DS and me love taking the time after breakfast to look over things we got in our stockings, and we all enjoy the anticipation and excitement of waiting until the afternoon for the tree presents. For me, if we opened everything at once, the day would feel really flat by the afternoon, and DS likes having things to look forward to across the day as well. We have a tradition of a bedtime present for him, and this year will save some bits for Boxing Day too - have got the last Harry Potter DVD which can be opened on Boxing Day for watching straight away!

oooo i like the idea of a bedtime pressie i may have to reclaim one present from their tree pile unless i give my ds1 the happyland set i have put away fro his bday, could do that (it's only a small set. i like the idea of boxing day presents we used to do that as children however my dh (yes i mean my husband) is a big kid and i highly doubt he would wait till boxing day for pressies he could have on christmas day.