48 hours of Christmas

Why hello there.  How was your holiday?  Things were an interesting shade of indigo over here.  I can't describe why it felt indigo, but that was just how it was.  It was bad, but we have had an interesting go of things lately, and it threatened to make the holiday a shade of black, but I managed a way out.  I decided to document our modest festivities fro Christmas Eve to Christmas Day to see if it really was a disaster, and it turns out it was just lovely.

I shared the pics on the longest post in the history of posts over on the family blog, but I thought I'd share it here too.  Not because I'm lazy but really generous and giving.  Now you don't have to click over to another site, ug.  Too taxing.  Anywho, here are the 48 hours of my Christmas.

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I'm not gonna lie, I woke up Saturday morning and wondered if I should just call this Christmas a wash.  We hadn't had the cheeriest week and I didn't know if all four of us home together all weekend would just end in disaster, holiday or not.  So out of curiosity, I decided to document all 48 hours just to see in the end if our Christmas this year was a fail or not.  I started bright and early on Christmas Eve morning (and yes, this WILL be the longest, largest post in the history of blog posts):

Husband was off helping some poor Brasilian motorists so breakfast was up to me - and the kids.  Red and green chocolate chip waffles, anyone??

The kids ate while watching Thomas the Tank Engine and sitting at the kitchen table like Irish Setters.

For me, hot chocolate.  Breakfast of champions.

Then I decided to take some pictures of our tree ornaments to remind me of the some of our great Christmases past.

Wedding ornament.  Less than a month until year  seven!

A Brasilian keychain a bunch of random kids gave to me after meeting me in a park.

My leprechaun from Mr. Howard Williams of the Border Collies. 

Our first married Christmas, we made hubs's family make us ornaments  for our nekid tree.  Most of them have survived!  These are Danny and Anna's contributions.

The kiddos then decided to go play in the half inch of snow in our front yard (a Christmas miracle - there aren't 18 feet of snow out there!!).

The fact that we can get the Dude in all that gear - heck, even a HAT is a miracle.  And the result of massive amounts of therapy (for him) and prayers (from us).  I teared up while slipping on his mittens - while I knew he didn't like it or feel comfortable, he was determined to do whatever it took to "GO OU-SIDE!!"

We managed to get a picture of them in all their gear, which I was super proud of.  And then I realized you can SEE how we managed to get the picture. Hi there!

Husband came out about halfway and took some pictures.  I'd been playing with the camera settings to get good lighting indoors and had forgotten to switch it out of manual, so the pictures came out super artsy.

See what the Dude is doing there?  He spent almost the entire time eating the snow off his gloves.  I think he ate half the yard.

Then, lunchtime!  We'd done all this last Saturday too, so as we were going in the Dude kept yelling "HOT DOG!"  He knew it was pigs-in-a-blanket and picnic time!

Oh, and also time to go for a wee jaunt in Daddy's snow boots.

Then without any prompting from me, WonderGirl got out her violin and decided to do some fiddling around.  With only minimal amounts of me begging her to use smoother bows.

Then there was an incident involving playing a game on Daddy's new tablet and WG's hatred of losing anything.

Was I going to let this be the final thing to derail our happy holiday?  NO!  You know what solves almost all ills?

Nail salon!  And also, playing with the camera timer!

There was a snack of popcorn...

... covered in industrial strength cheese powder. There was also some pie bakin':

And we bundled up to head for Christmas Eve dinner with some friends.

We had to hurry home for my favorite part of all Christmas - Christmas Eve and the retelling of the nativity story.

Of course after the part about the Wise Men, it's WG's favorite part... one present each.

Does WG know her brother or what??

Curly Temple!  Thanks, Gamma!

At this point, everyone was wiped so we prayed, snuggled, called it a night and vacated the premises to give Santa the space he needed.

The Dude woke us up repeatedly all night, not because of anticipation.  So when I finally got up at 5:30am or so with him, I made him snuggle with me so Daddy could get a few more zzzzzzzs.  And when WG woke up, she was sweet and didn't race downstairs, she just snuggled up to us on the Dude's couch until Daddy came out and checked downstairs to see if Santa had stopped by.  It was a wonderful way to start Christmas, at least for me!

And then the mayhem began...

.... except there was no mayhem.  They were so excited to play with their first presents that there was no frenzy to get to the next one.

Oh, and one cool thing - the Dude saw the unwrapped presents and said "open!" and actually ripped the paper off!  He's getting this present thing down!

We had to kind of rush them though - we had to get breakfast and all dolled up for church.

Blueberry muffins - breakfast of champions!

There was time for a good snuggle before church, though.  The Dude was a little tired what with yelling at us all night.

Church was lovely.  The loveliest part was no 7:30am ward council and no other meetings besides sacrament!    Husband narrated the program and I played violin and wrangled the kids in between.  Then it was time to head home and continue the madness.

First up, throw on pajama pants I MADE!!  And then try to get a picture of the kids wearing them....

And when that fails, try at least to get one of each.

Husband played on his new toy...

...and then taught WG about chemical reactions with yeast...

 ... and her nifty new science kit.  I'm glad no one asked me to try and explain anything to her.

That's where I took a power nap.  It was awesome.  Also awesome?  This was/is the front yard.

 That's December in Wisconsin.  YESSSSSS!!!!!!!

So the rest of the day was pretty uneventful.  There was MoTab on the telly:

... science that involved a magic wand and patient Daddy....

 ... the Dude playing with his car track and cars ALL DAY LONG..

... super yummy home made pizza from Daddy...

 ... Skyping with people we super like....

 .. getting help from Daddy but mostly making  potholder all by herself!...

... still more playing with the cars (he's doing it right now, actually!)...

... feeling incredibly blessed to get to spend the holiday with the people we love most....

.... and feeling relieved and wonderful that we survived another Christmas season.  Together.

And now we're going to have some family here in a matter of minutes to play for a few days!!    We'll leave you with the video we made of husband's mom's artwork with WG and my recording of For Unto Us A Child Is Born.  Thanks to our wee Christmas album we recorded as a family, it was easy and thrilling to keep the reason for the season close to our hearts.  And hearing your 5 year-old belt out Handel - and then your 2 year old start up - is reason enough to celebrate.  Merriest of Christmases to you!!