better late than never

Although Christmas seems like a million years ago, I did want to document that we actually celebrated it around here. With days and days of festivities.

We started out Christmas Eve eve (doesn't everyone start their celebrations two days in advance?!) with a sleep over. It was mentioned in a previous blog, but here are the super sweet pics.

Looking at these pictures makes me want to sleep all in one room all the time, and then I remembered that we did that for three nights in a row at Grandma and Papa's house and it makes me reconsider.

By the way... I'm pretty sure the pose in this picture by Olivia is nature NOT nurture.

We decided to shake up Christmas Eve a bit this year. And although I'm not exactly flexible, I am proud of myself for allowing a few traditions to bend this year. For example, we traditionally have appetizers for dinner but with our schedule and trying to get out the door for Church we had appetizers for lunch.

I know, radical wasn't it?!

We traditionally have a birthday cake for Jesus. I usually buy a birthday cake for Jesus from my favorite bakery. This year I thought it would be fun to bake and decorate cup cakes for the birthday cake. We also had a *contest* and whoever had the best got to have the candle in it Christmas morning. Yep, that was a colossal mistake. We ended up needing 3 candles. Thus the benefit of having an only child.

Another deviation from the norm, gifts on Christmas Eve. I had an internal battle for nearly a week (I KNOW! Its a wonder I have been diagnosed with irritable bowel syndrome... stress much?) about if I could actually enjoy Christmas if we opened gifts NOT on Christmas.

And guess what? It was great fun!

After gifts we hopped in the car and headed to church. Steve was part of the program this year. Fun stuff.

The next add on to the plan was to stop and grab dinner after church.

Guess what? NOTHING is open around here after 4pm on Christmas Eve. Except a Dayton favorite, Marion's Pizza. It was packed full of families enjoying Christmas festivities. And we ran into several families from church who recognized Steve from the program. He got a real kick out of it.

We had to rush home to put out cookies and milk for Santa. We even checked in with the Nordac Santa tracker. O was relieved to find that Santa was only covering Europe when she headed to bed.

We also needed to leave Santa a note letting him know which stocking was whose. Mental note: get stockings monogrammed before next year!

Santa gifts and Jesus' birthday cake early the next morning.

This was the year of the bike. Yippee.

Thanks to the note, Santa was able to identify whose stocking was whose.

He left cool shades.

And even a reindeer who poops candy. I guess Santa went with the potty humor that runs rampant around here. There were also cups of Flarp in the stockings. In case you don't know about Flarp... its like play dough that toots.

Santa's got a good philosophy... if you can't beat 'em... join 'em.

Turner on a bike: a natural.

Quinn on a bike: reluctant

Olivia on a bike (with Barbie on the handle bars) : a diva

Once Santa gifts were opened and clothes were changed, we hopped into the van and headed over the river and through the woods to Grandmother's house.

Where I proceeded to hibernate for the next three days. No camera. No blog. No email.

Merry Christmas to me.

Now... it's time to pick up the pieces and usher in 2011. Oey vey.