The Christmas Post

Blogging becomes kind of a chore when the kids are home with me ALL.DAY.LONG for days on end. The only time I have to do it is after they go to bed and by then all I want to do is veg on the couch. But the kids finally go back to school tomorrow, and since Blythe and Ethan are starting at their new school, I will probably want to blog about that. And therefore, I must do a Christmas post. I contemplated skipping it all together, but really that's just not acceptable.

So anyway, as mentioned before, we were skeptical of Blythe's excitement over getting a camera from Santa. Her reaction was pretty much as expected. Nil. She wasn't upset over it, but didn't ask us to open it up or anything. I opened it later for her and then we brought it with us to Gommy and Poppa's and then she did end up really liking it and took pictures of EVERYTHING. Pretty cool actually.


Ethan's reaction to his big, green tractor was as expected...total excitement. Though he did first pick up the toy sword Santa left and play with that before he ever sat on the tractor.



Brynn amazingly actually really liked her little Fisher Price kitchen she got from Santa. That is until Blythe and Ethan wanted to play "with" her. That was about the time she was getting tired anyway.


Braden cheated and bought me a Kindle. He said technically it wasn't cheating since it fit in my stocking. I cheated too and bought him the Godfather trilogy on BlueRay. Technically it would have fit in his stocking too, but it was full of other stuff. I love the Kindle though and have already started reading a book on it and it's awesome.


Anyway, we spent Christmas morning opening gifts here at home and playing with them. We were blessed with a beautiful white Christmas this year, perfect in that it was beautiful, easy to shovel, and only about an inch or two deep so didn't impede our ability to travel to Gommy and Poppa's later that day.


At Gommy and Poppa's we got to finally meet our new neice/cousin Harper (well, Braden had already met her when he went to Raleigh last weekend). She is so, so precious. Amazing Brynn was that small not too long ago. One day those 2 will be close buds.


We had our Christmas #2 on December 26 there. And amazingly it snowed there on that day (but not the day before), so we had 2 white Christmas's! Seeing as there were 12 people to open gifts for, the gift opening took us a good chunk of the day. There may have been 5 or 6 or 7 gag gifts in there as well (keeps everyone on their toes).


I got Laura the Michael Jackson dance game for the Wii, so we spent a good chunk of that afternoon and the next dancing our little hearts off. And getting a bit of a workout in. On Monday, Braden left in the morning and then Doug, Lynette, Ada, and Harper left in the evening. And that's when the crazy days of puking, kidney stones, and busted chins started. Somehow we actually had a night of good sleeping smack in the middle of all that and so we all felt well enough to go to Chuck E. Cheese one day. The pizza and red fruit punch turned out not to be the best choices for Ethan later that day (or rather the carpet in his room), but we did have a good time there and we racked up 359 tickets...go us! Even Brynn rode a few rides.


So although there were some crazy and not so fun times for some of us, overall it was a superb Christmas season for us!