Another Christmas to Remember

Once we were all home safely from our little Arizona vacation, I could finally relax and enjoy Christmas.  Christmas Eve was spent cooking and finishing off all the last minute things that I ALWAYS leave until the last minute.  I know, maybe one year I will learn.  Christmas Eve we had my family over for our traditional Christmas Eve dinner of crab in shells, ham, funeral potatoes and spinach salad.

Kids table

and the adult table.

My brother Nate sponsors an Iraqi family and so we had them for dinner as well.  Slight change in the menu for them since they don’t eat pork!  They don’t speak much English, but we loved having them.  It made it just a bit more special.

Musical number with Chris’ whole family.  He wrote a song and parts for each of his wife and children to take part.  It was very cool.

Gifts all around as the cousins exchanged dollar gifts and got presents from Baapa and Grandma.

Christmas Day was an exciting one filled with sports clothing, balls, trains, sleds, boots and guitar hero which Santa gave us used!  Since when does Santa give used gifts that don’t work right????

Jonah was so tired because the boys had woken him up.  He spent most of the morning sitting on Daddy’s lap and trying to decide if he was awake enough to enjoy it.  Once all of his trains were open, he was on cloud nine and played with them for the entire day.  Another Christmas has come and gone, and I swear this one was the fastest ever!

Jacob’s list

I just found a Christmas list that Jacob made at school.  

A DS

a new scooter

a rip stick

money

Ipod Touch

toy limo

for willer

a new pocet nife

I hope he isn’t terribly disappointed, he wouldn’t ever make me a list!

Worth It?

I have already mentioned several times how much I do not like traveling by car.  It bores me to pieces (I know, a sign of my unintelligent brain), it scares me (this I think is justified), I eat too much junk (I didn’t bring very much this time), my back and hips hurt (ya don’t tell this to our friend Mike who has a broken back and the insurance just denied his surgery).  I love to travel, but please just get me there by plane.

Now as we pulled into the Phoenix valley after a good 12 hours of sitting in the car, the temperature on the car said 75!  I rolled down my windows and took in that beautiful beautiful sun.  Sitting in traffic smelling the smell of the sun, suddenly it wasn’t so bad that I had been dying in the car.   A 3 mile run/walk with Bryan OUTSIDE and fresh authentic tamales for dinner.  Ya the drive wasn’t THAT bad, or maybe I can say that because I am flying home!

Christmas Time

So why is it that as we age Christmas changes?  Every year I think about how I can make this the best Christmas ever and then I realize that it is never going to happen.  This year especially I have been stressed out because we are going out of town for a few days before Christmas.  People keep saying, “it is good you are leaving, then you have to get everything done”.  Well I have realized I don’t work that way.  I like to visit with people and go and do fun things WAY too much to have to rush to get “everything” done.  And what is that “everything”?  I really don’t buy gifts for that many people.  I think it is the fact that I want everything I do at Christmas time to be the most spectacular thing, without a lot of effort.  I overbuy for my kids because I love watching them open lots of presents (although I refuse to buy gifts just to have them, meaning I don’t buy toys that will never get played with).

My friend Tiffany summed it up this morning when she said that Christmas for adults should be about getting together for dinner or other togetherness and just enjoy each others company.  I have decided that is what Christmas is to me, whether it is just with my little family singing Christmas carols (yes I make them do that with me each night), having friends over for dinner, going to dinner at friends houses, parties, looking at the lights.  These are the things to enjoy.

So from this moment on I am going to ENJOY every minute of the rest of the season, even while I am driving in a car for 11 hours!

Forget Baby, where did I go?

So after months of being told how much better my hair would look in a more natural color, I did it.  It is much darker than expected, but it is O.K.  This is the first time I have ever “colored” my hair.  Highlights don’t count.   So here it is, what do you think?????

The old me

And the new me.

Where did my baby go?

 

Jonah was in desperate need for a haircut so I took him today to my dear friend Emilee.  I said, cut it short because it grows so fast.  She cut it short and now he is a big boy with a buzz, she insists it is not a buzz.  I think it looks cute and in a few weeks it will be darling.  He on the other hand knows he looks cute, he just smiled brightly whenever she asked him if he was cute!