Christmas

Ok,so it is hard to believe that Christmas has come and gone. Actually four Christmas celebrations have come and gone. Before I completely forget everything that happened here are the highlights. Christmas Eve starts with three excited children jumping on my bed! Everyone up, showered, dressed, presents in car and off to Chutka's (my sister Amy) for Brunch with Big Grandpa and Grandma. The gift of the morning was a "time out" bear. It is actually a frog with a timer in his belly that you set when your child needs a time out. The funniest part is that all the boys, Wil, Tyler, Aidan, and Noah immediately proceeded to do things bad to get them in trouble. It was quite humorous once we figured out what they were doing!!! My sister's monkey bread was the hit of the morning. From there we all proceeded to Christmas Eve mass. Three sets of parents and nine kids, what were we thinking?? The service was beautiful, they had a good children's choir and the youth band played lots of TSO (Trans Syberian Orchestra) songs, which was a great treat for our family as we started our holiday season the day after Thanksgiving with the TSO concert downtown! Right before the service began, an usher asked Chris if our family would like to take up the offetory gifts, he passed the torch to Amy and Eric as it was their parish ;-). After several musical pews...yes that means parents and kids changing seats, the service underway and Amy's family and my two girls take up the offetory gifts (enough to bring tears to my eyes). Then baby Hannah (who was born on Kristen's birthday, so actually it is their birthday now :-), fell asleep and I got to hold her in my arms and watch her sleep, of course, now thinking that this little girl was Kristen 11 years ago, more tears...sigh. It was nice to remember the reason for the season.

Then off to Bushia's to exchange presents with my siblings and mom. The kids waited all of 30 seconds after we got there to tear into the huge pile. The highlights for my girls were their gift cards to the mall (yes, they have already been to the mall to spend some of it!) and Wil's highlight was his football (not to be a surprise as it was his first word). They all made out with a ton of presents, so here it is Christmas Eve and Santa hasn't even visited yet! The best part of dinner at my mom's was the snowball cookies! They have been my favorite for over 40 years now.



Home by 10:30 and cookies and milk left out for Santa. Everyone asleep by midnight and Santa left his goodies. The "rule" at the house is no one wakes mom and dad up until 8am, they made it to 7:30 :-). Santa leaves their stockings on the landing with magazine, crafts and fun stuff to do so the kids were up at 6:30 playing with their stocking stuffers, but after an hour they started "checking" on us. LOL. The big present this year was a new trampoline, ours after 10 years has seen its better days. Kristen got the green ipod that she asked for (it has been her ears constantly since she opened it), Kate got a Nintendo DS game, and Wil got Mario Kart and Sonic Olympic games for his Wii. Not to mention a dozen other gifts from underwear (yeah mom ;-) to clothes, to games and books. It was a very sucessful morning, with turnovers, Christmas music and mom and dad back in bed for a nap by 9:30.

Everyone back awake at 11:00. Five people in and out of the shower and off to Uncle David's where my Mom and Aunt Vic host Christmas dinner. My mom of course presents a huge meal of ham and turkey, three kinds of potatoes, green beans and more. So yummy! And that doesn't include the desert table which is overflowing! Lots of laughs and stories told! It was a great holiday! Sorry the memories are so short, but they were getting away from me!