Christmas 2007

Christmas 2007: Christmas for us this year was a 3 day marathon. Sunday night we had dinner and gift exchange with my friends from high school and their families. Monday (Xmas eve) morning we had brunch and gift exchange with Casey’s Dad (the kids call him Big Daddy) and Bubbe, and then we had Xmas eve dinner with about 20 people from Casey’s Mom’s side of the family. On Christmas morning the kids opened presents from Santa, then Grammy Carole and Granddad brought more gifts, then Uncle Dan and Natalie came over with more gifts, then Grammy Barb brought more gifts, then we had sit-down dinner for 19 at our house and opened even more gifts! Notable activities at Xmas Eve brunch were when Daddy taught Alex how aim his Nerf Stomp-Rockets at people and Alex got this evil grin and proceeded to gleefully shoot everyone in the room while Chloe sat quietly in her party dress and played her new board game with Bubbe. I got a great picture of Alex running gleefully away as Big Daddy pretends to try to get the Nerf rockets away from him. Notable activity at Xmas eve dinner was that I left the party to go visit with my brother and sister-in-law in the hospital because SIL’s water had broken at 2:30am. I arrived at the hospital at 6pm and the baby was delivered by C-Section at 6:23. Talk about fortuitous timing! He is named Aidan and Mom and baby are now home and doing great. Here are some pictures http://picasaweb.google.com/constance.phelps/BabyAidan, and a link to their blog http://thesmithfamily-danielle.blogspot.com/ We didn’t get the kids in bed until after 9p on Xmas eve (over an hour late) and they got up just after 7am (pretty close to normal). It took them over an hour to open the presents from Santa. They’d stop in the middle to play with one toy or another and since it was just the 4 of us, there was no pressure to hurry up and get it done. The only present Alex asked Santa for was a remote control helicopter, and the only present Chloe asked Santa for was ballet shoes. Luckily Santa came through with both of those and a whole bunch more. Chloe wore her ballet shoes with her new tights and leotard for the rest of the day and didn’t even put on a party dress for dinner (wearing party dresses is one of her favorite things in life!). Alex played a bunch with the R/C helicopter and I got a great picture of Granddad feigning alarm and Alex giggling as the helicopter is “coming to get Granddad”. By the end of the evening the kids were so wound up neither of them could get to sleep. Alex doesn’t usually fall asleep right away and we’ve taken to letting him play in his bed with the light on for a few minutes before lights-out time, so while Alex was winding down, I lay with Chloe and rubbed her back to help her calm down. Then I turned Alex’s light out and a few minutes later he complained about not being able to get to sleep, so I went and knelt next to his bed and lay my head next to him and he wrapped his arm around me and talked quietly. Even though I was very tired and I usually prefer than that they go to bed the first time I leave them upstairs (which they do successfully a remarkable percentage of the time), this time alone with Alex and Chloe ended up being my was favorite part of the day because between and getting dinner ready and put away, and cleaning up the endless waves of packaging that kept coming into the house so we’d have room to have dinner for 19, I found I hadn’t made much time to really enjoy the kids. They really enjoyed their Christmas and are still saying that they wish we could have Christmas every day. Here are some more pics: http://picasaweb.google.com/constance.phelps/Christmas2007