Christmas Festivites 2008

Whew!!! I don't know about you guys, but I am glad this day is over!! I mean, I love it... I do. But I am equally as glad to see it go!

We started our fun and festivities with Christmas Eve over at Frank's parents house. We do this every year. We had traditional Christmas dinner and let me just say it was yummo!! I have never had anything that Frank's mom didn't rock the house on! And she did not disappoint this time either!

When dinner was over, of course, it was time for some presents. Everyone picks a spot on the floor and then some "elves" pass out the gifts. The hardest thing is making the kids wait to open their stuff with all those packages sitting in front of them. But once they had the green light, it was on!! This year, I have to say, was by far the best. All of the kids were completely into it and they all understood what was going on. And instead of having 273 gifts each to tear through, they only had a few each. They were things that they really wanted and they weren't overwhelmed with just moving to the next one. And Frank and I weren't overloaded with stuff to bring home and put away!! Let's see... Jackson got some Wii games and a gift card to Gamestop and Toys R Us. Wyatt got a HUGE box of dinosaurs, some walking dinosaurs, and a dinosaur book (do you see a theme here? What can I say, the boy LOVES him some dinos). Mallory got a box of princess dress up shoes (6 different pair), a baby doll stroller and new baby and some fake jewelry. She has clomped around everywhere pushing that stroller.

This morning started off with Jackson getting up at 5am. He went back upstairs. Then back down at 5:30. I didn't know what time it was though, so I invited him to crawl in the bed with us. Wyatt joined us a few minutes later and I glanced at the clock and noticed that it said 5:42am, after my eyes adjusted. They were sent back upstairs. Fifteen minutes later, as I was dreaming again, they came back down asking if NOW it was time to get up. At this point, I gave up, or in, whichever, and got up. Put the quiche in the oven and Frank turned the tree on.

When he did that, the boys saw that Santa had indeed stopped by and they were too excited. By 615am, it was over. Everything had been opened and the boys were busy playing. I was on my second cup of coffee. My parents had spent the night with us so we went ahead and opened gifts with them too. The biggest gift was for my mom this year. I had one of the pictures that Kim had taken and had it put on 20X30 canvas. My dad framed it for her. She really liked it. It was beautiful!!

The morning was completely stress free, believe it or not, considering that I was having 20 people in my house for lunch. We decided to go non-traditional for lunch. Soups and sandwiches. Although, I planned that before I knew that the weather was going to be 75 degrees today! Anyway... we had vegetable soup (made by my mom), chicken chowder (made by Frank's mom) and I made Chicken Tortilla Soup. And I must say, my soup rocked!! It was really good. Good enough for Ryan to say he wanted us to have it on a Friday night dinner!!

Once everyone had gone home and the kids were all napping and everything had been cleaned up.. I took a nap too. A long, hard nap. The kind were you dream AND drool. And probably snore, but I would never admit to that! When we finally got up, it was time to go out to Aunt C's house and have dinner at the barn. It was traditional. (do you see why I chose to have a nontraditional at lunch?)

It was good, but I am glad to be back home in my jammies and getting ready for bed. We just have one more "Christmas" to do on Saturday when my aunt and uncle come from out of town. The kids are super excited about them coming. Hope everyone had a great day!!!