A Very Merry Christmas 2011

Again the holidays snuck up way too fast and in a flash they are over.  I hope I did my best in soaking up every bit of excitement and family time and joy and tradition and memories that I could.  I love Christmastime, and I am always amazed at how quickly it goes by.  Especially this year...  I think it snuck up even quicker as we have not had any snow on the ground to make it "feel" like Christmastime.  Boo.  Our dreams of a White Christmas never came through, but that's so minimal in the big picture of things.

I managed to get my 2nd sinus infection this month, starting the week of Christmas break (on and off sinus pressure, sore throat and ear pressure).  Christmas Eve it hit me full force and I was down for the count most of Christmas Day.  I tried my best to take everything in and enjoy the boys' excitement.  I hope that I can document it well here for the future.

Christmas Eve was spent here this year, with Dave, Lori, Don and the girls coming over for dinner, presents and Christmas Eve service at Westwinds.  Present opening was over in a flash, and was a blur of wrapping paper, ooohs and ahhs, "I need another present to open!" and "Cool!" "Awesome!"  I had baked some sugar cookies ahead of time and let the kids go to town decorating them.  I think this will become a new Christmas Eve Tradition as they all had so much fun.  We quickly ate dinner (lasagna and garlic bread... with a last minute trip to Meijer to get Lori a replacement meal b/c Ryan mistakenly bought lasagna with meat! Oops!) and then loaded up to go to Westwinds.  We met my sister, Addi, my Dad and his stepdaughters there.  We have usually gone to the late night candlelight service, so this year it was a little different (more family oriented).  J-Vo called the kids up to the stage and let them write an impromptu Christmas song that we all sang.  It was cute and the kids had a blast.   David did a nice little recap on the Christmas Story with some modern day cast, which was also hilarious (think baby Carlos as Baby Jesus, Rapunzel as Mary and Tim Allen as Joseph).  Pretty good stuff, and definitely "dumbed down" to our modern time thinking.  Afterward we headed home to tuck the kids in bed and play Santa Clause.  My favorite, usually, but instead I felt like death and was so unmotivated.   Ryan decided to make some Santa Footprints and those turned out to be a HUGE hit.

That night I slept like doo doo... waking up at 3am and sleeping restlessly until we were woken up at 6am by a flashlight shining in our eyes, and Porter yelling "Everybody!  Everybody WAKE UP!  Santa Came!  Get Up Get Up Get UP!!!!  You won't believe it!  He left FOOTPRINTS all over our LIVING ROOM!!!"    His excitement was classic and I hope I never forget his amazement that morning.  He raced downstairs after waking Hudson up and we all attempted to follow suit quickly.  He made sure to show us every piece of evidence that Santa had been here.... "Look at these footprints!"  "Look! He left this huge race track!!"  "WHO ate this apple and left the core!" "Look at our stockings and the presents!!!"  Hudson was kind of in a daze at this point and just like last year missed his own stocking and pile of presents and headed towards Porters :)    Once he was guided in the right direction, they began opening their loot.   They both were so excited over every little thing and it was so fun to watch.