The Wrap on Christmas

We have just a few days left of Christmas Break. It has been pretty nice overall. I must say that I just love how the kids are now sleeping in till 8:30 or later. But I know that Sunday will not be fun when we need to get up and out the door by 8:30. (Our meeting times have changed from 11 to 9- ouch!)

I have been a bit sad that we didn't visit Missouri for Thanksgiving or Christmas. We usually go for Thanksgiving but with Seth's cast it wasn't an option. And as for Christmas- well, Dave's schedule has been sporadic and we just didn't plan for it. Anyway, we did miss being with more family, but we have enjoyed each other as well.

On Christmas Eve, we had hot dogs, potato salad, and IBC root beer followed by a birthday cake for Jesus. (Cake story coming soon.) Dave read from Luke 2 and we each opened one present. The kids were constantly checking the NORAD Santa Tracker until about 2 hours before he was due at our house. Though the kids were upstairs in Olivia's room, they were not sleeping. Olivia, Paul and Faith wanted to be together and even had Seth in the playpen though that didn't last too long.

Santa was anxious to get things done early and get to bed this year. Unfortunately, Faith came down the stairs and snuck right up on Santa. Of course Dave and I jumped as soon as we realized she was approaching. Thankfully she wasn't that sneaky since she was tattle-telling about something, but I guess we just didn't hear her footsteps for all the noisy packaging we were trying to get through. We shuffled her off quickly and though I thought this might have been her last Christmas as a believer, it seems as if she didn't take it all in. Olivia told me she didn't report anything when she returned to bed and from my conversations with her it appears that she may have a year or two of magic left. :)

The kids had such a hard time getting to sleep that Dave and I woke a few minutes before them. We had told them the earliest acceptable time to go downstairs would be 6 am and it turned out that we all headed down at about 6:30. Of course the kids were pleased with Santa's gifts and we quickly moved on to opening the rest of the presents.

(I don't mean to be a Grinch, but the presents thing gets more and more on my nerves each year. It is fun to see a child excited about a new toy, but new stuff in mass quantities just seems so excessive. Perhaps I am just getting old. I hate that the phrase "How was your Christmas?" often means "Did you get anything good?" Sigh...

While I'm at it, let me bring up another thing that irks me. During the weeks prior to Christmas, everyone seems to be singing "fa-la-la-la-la," lavishly decorating, and shopping till dropping while enjoying a nice sugar buzz. That's all good and well but it leads me to be quite surprised at all the facebook posts that I read on Dec 26th that said the tree and Christmas crap had all been put away. If it is soooo fun, then why are people being sooo quick to get rid of it? I don't know. Don't be offended if you took down your tree on the day after. I'm just a grump and wish I had mine down already.

If you can't vent on your own blog, then where can you vent?! Oh yeah... facebook. Do you know how many fb posts referenced hot cocoa and marshmallows during the month of December? I believe it was roughly 51 percent.)

Anyway, back to the merry stuff. We had our ham, apple pie, Hershey pie, etc on Christmas afternoon. No company this time as we were still worn out from Thanksgiving (just kidding.) And now, I'm just going to post a bunch of pictures from Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.