Feelin' Jingle-y

-
Christmas was a little different this year. For Christmas Eve we started a new holiday tradition, dinner at Red Lobster! You'd be shocked by how packed the place actually was. The rest of the evening was spent at home waiting for the children to get to bed so that Santa could come and visit. I had the brilliant idea of hiding all the presents in the back of Eric's car. This worked very well even though a couple of times Eric's dad came close to spilling the beans (Poppa, kids in hearing range: Are you sure you want the kids to ride in the Escape, they might see things. Eric: They can't see any of the stuff back there. Me: SIGH). Carly went to bed pretty early, for her anyhow, and we sent Josh up to his room for sleeping at about midnight. And waited. 1 am, Josh is still awake. 2 am, he comes downstairs for a "drink" and to tell us he can't sleep. I send him back to bed with videos and strict instructions not to come out of his room because I am going to wrap presents (this is true, I had to wrap all those presents in Eric's car still). 3 am, I am wrapping presents downstairs and I hear Josh come out of his room crying. Upstairs I go, and Joshua is crying because he is afraid that Santa won't come because he can't fall asleep. In my heart, I know the time has come. That's right, I let the Secret Christmas cat out of the bag. At first this did not produce the results I was hoping for...Joshua cried even harder. But, after some talking and explaining he dried his tears. Back downstairs I went to finish wrapping, Joshua waited at the top of the stairs because I had promised him that he could pick one present to open up after I was done. Tears became giggles and excitement and all was well on Christmas Eve again. Joshua finally submitted to his bed around 4 am. About 10 am we were up again to open presents:


Poppa was so shocked that we got him a bottle of Jim Beam....now I know that I probably shouldn't monetarily support the buy/sale of alcohol being LDS and all...but it was so worth it for the look on his face!

Joshua enjoyed sorting out the presents and playing Santa Claus on Christmas morning.

Carly didn't quite get the whole "rip of the paper!" thing, but she loved peeking under the paper. When she was through with her own presents she made after any wrapped presents within reach.


I'm not sure just what Joshua is looking at....it's really hard to get him to make a nice face for pictures these days.


Joshua picked this Lego mask out from lego.com when we were browsing the site for Christmas presents. He talked about it for weeks after he first spotted it.

Carly's favorite presents were her 2 pairs of dress up shoes (watching her walk is very funny) and her Dora backpack. A close runner up are her new dolls. She's such a girly girl.




We had a ham dinner with way too much food but, as opposed to Thanksgiving, I didn't burn the stuffing and I remembered to cook the rolls. It tasted good but was tinted with Mom's absense. I think I had my "I want mom!" moment back at the Thanksgiving dinner and Eric had his today. It hit him pretty hard during dinner. This week would also have been Mom's birthday, we plan to go out for dinner Thursday to mark the day.
Joshua, with new knowledge of the source of presents, was so sweet all day long. He thanked us over and over for his presents and gave many hugs and kisses of gratitude. It was a happy Christmas after all.

p.s. For a wonderful Christmas story, take a gander at B-Happy!

Comments

Anonymous said…
Thank you for all that you did for our family on Christmas Eve and Christmas. I love you very much Sarah.

Eric
12:33 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

On Becoming

-
Image
When my daughter was born, a new person was born inside of me.  One that thought a lot more about what it meant to be other, outside, and different.  I had lived my whole life inside the comfortable confines of being a middle class white person.  Sure, my parents struggled and lived on the fringes of consumerism.  We had enough, but only just.  My dad worked hard, my mom worked hard, and we got by with enough.  I never spent a whole lot of time considering what not enough looks like.  I had what I needed, I never went hungry, and my parents provided toys and movies and other entertainments that are the hallmark of what we might consider American life. But, when my daughter came to us with a complicated background, this new person inside me started to wonder.  Why were circumstances for others so different from my own?  How would her life be different with another family? What if her birth mother had decided a different path?   These questions, and lots of others, were pushed and enlarg
Read more

Forty three

-
 My sister told me I should blog again.  A lot has happened since I did this thing - I'm a little rusty.  In the last few years, I've sort of relinquished the dream of being a writer - like, a real writer, not a hobby writer - and so the act of writing became...less.  Less important, less often, less satisfying.  It's an instrument out of tune. Why relinquish the dream? Life got busy.  A lot has changed.  In the 5 years since I blogged regularly: My son graduated high school and went on a two year mission for our church. My daughter turned 12, 13, 14, and 15.  Fifteen!   We moved a couple of times. Trump became president.  I got a job and started teaching, then principal-ing and now director-ing.  I'm buried in it right now. My brothers both moved away. A pandemic. My parents moved away (just last week, after a long time planning). And lots of other small and big moments, mashed together in a blur. Now here I am, still trying to figure me out.   I used to think that whe
Read more

And I didn't prepare a speech!

-
Image
My first, and probably only, blogger award! Yay! Thanks to That Girl in Brazil, not only uber cute but uber sweet. I'm supposed to pass on the love to other bloggers by linking them and then posting in their comments. But, seriously, how much more ad space do you guys need? Ok, ok, fine. I pick Mary cause she totally posted her flip flops. And justRandi cause she said she'd come to my house if I sent her an invite. And llegue because she made reference to a certain male body part while shopping in Wal-Mart, plus she beats me at games. and Heather because she makes me giggle and she comments even when my posts are lame. Just passin the <3 I feel super guilty for not linking everybody. But, you wouldn't be on my blog roll if I didn't think you were super cool.
Read more