I woke up to the smell of bacon. The scent coming from the kitchen made a strong trail seeping through the crack at the bottom of my bedroom door and finally making its way into my little nostrils. I was 7-years old and it was Christmas morning. Looking back, I'm surprised I ever fell asleep at all because i used to get so excited on Christmas Eve that I couldn't sleep a wink. I was so anxious to open presents and more importantly, sneak a peak at Santa. I used to try and tip toe around my house thinking I couldn't be seen, just waiting for that big jolly man to squeeze his way through the chimney. Of course my parents always found me because as it turns out my tip toeing wasn't so silent after all. My mom would put me to bed and I would promise to stay in bed. She would say "the quicker you get to sleep, the quicker you can open your gifts and it will be morning." To an anxious seven year old, those words don't mean much.As the smell of bacon quickly brought me back to life, I crawled out of bed in my holiday pajamas which my mother always gave me the night before Christmas. I remember knowing this particular Christmas was going to be different. The first thing I did was run over to my chocolate filled calendar with yummy treats I had been working on devouring all month. To this day, I buy those silly calenders and look forward to the milk chocolate surprises. Being older now and having to deal with the day to day stresses, I tend to turn to chocolate as a guilty pleasure. I usually buy Sees milk chocolate because I can find it easily in malls around my house.After eating the mini chocolate snowman sitting in the December 31st square of the calender, I ate the best breakfast and then I ran to the couch and sat with my legs crossed and my heart pounding. Dad always separated my brothers gifts from my own. We each had our own pile with presents of all sizes just waiting to revealed. Time flew by as we ripped open all of the beautiful wrapping paper, careless to such details. I got Malibu Beach Barbie and I remember not wanting to tell my parents I was to old for such a gift. Other than that, my brother and i got amazing gifts and like most kids who are selfish at Christmas, we wanted MORE. We knew there was something else but we had opened everything under the tree. In my family, growing up there were few Christmas mornings that occurred without a "big" gift that couldn't be found under the tree. My brother whispered "maybe there isn't anything else." I knew better.We dove into our stuffed stockings which I loved because I always got chocolate Santa's. They were huge, milk chocolate ones too similar to the chocolate bunnies kids get around Easter time. FINALLY, my dad pretended like he wanted my brother and I to get something out of the trunk of his car. We found two brand new bikes wrapped in a huge red silk ribbon. Mine was purple and sparkled in the sun. It was the best bike I ever owned. Christmas didn't end there though. Dad had built us a tree house!