The Obligatory Post-Christmas Post

It's over. The anticipation, the build-up, the stress - the holiday. A whole year over. Amazing.

We had a pretty nice Christmas here at our house. Nothing too fancy, but the kids seemed pretty pleased with their loot. And I think they felt okay about the whole season. I haven't really asked, because if I ask, then they just might tell me the truth. So I'll just assume that they had a spirit-filled happy holiday season... (...of course you know what they say about assuming...)

ANYWAY -

We hosted Christmas Eve with my family this year, so we had the whole crew over for dinner, nativity, and presents. And Ooooh BOY! Did we have a full house! The biggest stroke of genius was that we let the kids play downstairs while the adults ate dinner first. Usually, we herd all the kids up for eating, and then the adults get what's left, but this year... uh uh. It was so nice!! So, take note - grown ups eat first - it works.



The nativity was an exercise in madness. Absolutely NO "spirit of the season" entered in to this production. Tired and grumpy kids who just wanted the presents and had to put in their time as nativity characters before they could rip into their gifts... Super fun. It was really cute, but crazy, crazy, crazy!!




Then, the annual pajama-rama. My parents give all the grandkids matching jammies for Christmas, and we love it! (as the kids get older, they usually end up getting sweats that coordinate with the little kid p.j.s) They looked so cute! Mom also surprised them with piggy banks for each child with their names on them. So fun. These fat little ceramic pigs. They were way excited.




Christmas Day was fun. Now, you may remember a few years back we had the infamous 4 a.m. present raid at our house. Since then we've used various means to keep the kids away from the presents until a decent hour. Well, this year, we just put a sign on the easel and trusted them to sleep until 7. Sophie woke up around 5 crying, so I went downstairs to see what she needed. I got to the bottom of the stairs, and there were all the kids - awake and watching tv. At 5!!!!! I just looked at them, said "don't come up until 7" and went back upstairs to sleep... And they listened. At 7 on the dot, they crept up the stairs and got us out of bed.

We had a great time opening gifts, and playing with new things, and then we took off for grandma Joanie's house where we spent the rest of our Christmas Day.

It was a nice, low-key kind of Christmas. And to be perfectly honest, I'm kinda glad it's over. It was just missing a little something. Don't get me wrong, it WAS nice, and the kids loved it, but I'm very hopeful that over the course of the next year I will have some ideas about making next Christmas a little more meaningful for my little family. So on that note....

Bring on 2010!