Merry Christmas All

Well, Christmas has past for another year, and I hope all my readers had a wonderful holiday. We had a great time here. The adventure began on Christmas Eve when we had a great Vintage service and Vin got to sing his solo. He didn't look nervous at all and he was just as cute as can be. Though the guys expected low numbers, it was a well-attened service with lots of families. It is still amazing to me to look around the room and know this is my church, but I don't know everyone yet.

After wolfing down a pizza for lunch, we put the kids down for naps so we could wrap the mountain of presents. I barracaded the door with the ironing board, but Mattie rushed in once to tell us that Charleigh had taken off her own poopy diaper and Vin pushed his way in with a bloody nose. Both of them were so freaked out, I don't think they actually saw anything and were still basically oblivious to what we were up to!

That night we drove down to Fayetteville's square to see the light display. Somehow on the way home, the kids and I got into a major discussion on alchohol, smoking, drugs and gambling....You never know when you'll have those conversations!

Then it was home again for our Christmas Eve tradition of new pajamas. We put the kids to bed around 7:30 p.m.

At 9 oclock, I could tell that the girls were still awake. Robb and I watched a movie and had a glass of wine and congratulated ourselves on not being up all night, wrapping presents.
Robb was out like a light by 11, but I was still pretty wound up, and ended up watching "All in the Family" until 12. (TBS's 24 Hours of the Christmas story hadn't started yet!) Vin came in to ask if he could snuggle around then, too, but we sent him back to bed.


At 2:45, I distinctly heard Charleigh's voice in the room, which jerked me awake. But I couldn't decipher the other strange noise I was hearing...so I woke up Robb and he headed out the the living room to find Vinny, making us coffee, cereal and Christmas cards. After some convincing, we got him back to bed. It was the coffe pot's hissing and growling that I couldn't figure out.

At 6:15, I heard Mattie waking up the other two. She was scolding Vin for touching the coffee pot.

At 6:30, our agreed upon time, we dragged ourselves out of bed and the festivities began. At our house, we open stocking presents first, then have breakfast and then open the "big presents."

The breakfast casserole was a disaster this year. Apparently, there is a reason that you should use frozen hash browns and not freshly grated potatoes...they turn black. It was the ugliest casserole I've ever seen. And as I set it on the table to take our chances on, I remembered that for ten years I have made cranberry scones for Christmas breakfast but somehow, with everything else that was going on, I forgot. Robb declared that it wasn't even Christmas without them.








Then came the big presents. Video to ensue, but it was good stuff. My sweet hubby pulled off his magic, despite our agreement to not get each other big presents. I had a stocking prepared for him, but when I began opening my stocking gifs, I found a bunch of empty packages, filled with packing peanuts and the like. As the big presents wound down, he handed me a large flat package. Inside was a beautiful antique photograph that I had admired when Robb and I went to Eureka for our anniversary back in August. The man is good.

Since I flunked Christmas breakfast, I put my better efforts into Christmas dinner: ham, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole and pumpkin pie. Sara and Daisy joined us and we had a merry dinner...turns out I can actually cook.

By 8, the kids had faded into La La Land, and by 9, Robb had joined them.

It was a lovely Christmas...albeit exhausting for a certain mutt.