The Kardashian kids got one heck of a stocking stuffer last Christmas! "We were done with our gifts, and my mom, Kris, and stepdad, Bruce [Jenner], came in and said they had one more gift, but everyone needed to get into the car," Kim Kardashian, who stars with her family in E!'s Keeping Up With the Kardashians, tells Life & Style. "We all got in the car and thought it was going to be a horse, because my sister had gotten a horse the year before and we'd had to drive to a stable. But then we pulled up to the driveway of this house in Hidden Hills, Calif., and my mom just threw the keys at us. We were like, 'No way!'"

Needless to say, Kim and her siblings -- Kourtney, 30, Khloe, 24, Rob, 22, Kendall, 13, and Kylie, 11 -- decided this particular present didn't need returning. "The house was empty, and we all ran in," recalls Kim, 28. "We were so excited." And Kris was even more overjoyed to see the expressions on her children's faces. She had first looked at the house in early 2008.

"My two youngest were with me the day I looked at it," Kris, 53, tells Life & Style. "After that, they were writing me letters, screen-grabbing pictures on the Internet, and every night I would go to sleep and it would be, 'Please, Mommy, please. I'll do anything.' I'm thinking, These kids are crazy. Then I didn't talk about it anymore."

Bigger is better

But she kept thinking about it and finally decided to splurge and make her kids' dreams come true. And the family couldn't be happier. Their new house -- which viewers may see more of on the show next season -- is a whopping 9,000 square feet, twice the size of their previous home (where Khloe is staying until it's sold) right down the road.

"My mom definitely needed more space," says Kim. Adds Kris, "It's complete chaos at all times. You never know who's running in and out. We might as well have revolving doors. This is the place where everyone gathers." Kris wouldn't have it any other way. "That's what I wanted when I was growing up," she says. "My mom worked, so my house couldn't be a place where everybody gathered, because everyone was gone a lot," she remembers. "I wanted to have a huge family, and I wanted a house where everyone hung out. That's what this is."

As always, Kris is counting her blessings. "People say, 'Ugh, my kids are such a headache.' Well, sometimes mine are too," she says. "But you get through the tough times. We're all there for one another all the time."

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