Christmas Day
Nothing beats the look on the kids faces and the excitement in the air on Christmas morning. The kids woke up very AM, Darren attended to them once and then came back to bed. By the time we got up (8:30am) we found them downstairs sitting at the table in the kitchen. Claire (French) had made them crepes’ and there were all nice and fed and watching a cartoon about Johnny Appleseed. (Thanks Claire!) The adults had planned present opening at 10am, but that was too long to wait (Can you say “excruciating”?) So together with Sam and Maria we made an executive decision to begin earlier. By the time we were prepared with all that we would need (cameras and camcorders) it was 9:30 and the fun began!
Mishy manned the now famous Christmas morning coffee bar, making us all delicious Irish cream coffees. The aftermath of Christmas present opening lingered all day, only moving from the living room to our kids room. I enjoyed stepping over all the hundreds of little pieces of toys and treasures that sprinkled the floor all day long. Darren worked with Emmer for about an hour setting up his new playmobile pirate ship (thank God he had his new cowboy boots to entertain him, boy does he love those!) while Sam worked for well over an hour meticulously putting together Evan’s new Mars Mission Lego set (then they helped the boys learn to play with them properly J.) I’m thankful Ella’s gifts were plug and play. –A polly-pocket set, and a ballet suit which I’m afraid she won’t be taking off for the next year or so. By dinner time Emmer was overtired, he zonked out and didn’t wake up till morning.
Christmas dinner was delicious and also a bit of an eventful event. Lemmesee, yes. The environment could be resembled to a rather rambunctious Italian Restaurant full of “familias” catching up. It was a bit of a different experience being sick for Christmas. Darren and I both had colds and sore throats that kept us under the weather and more than modest in our feasting. We can be thankful we haven’t “saved it all for Christmas day”. It’s a good reason not to wait for Christmas to enjoy life, or you might miss it altogether. I’m glad we were able to save food and look forward to enjoying it a bit later.