Feelin' Jingle-y

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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
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