Writing About Christmas

Christmas overload has hit me full force this year. I just can't seem to jot down anything about what we did over Christmas, so I'm cheating and using what my husband wrote. Hopefully, I'll write some stuff about New Years soon, because it was a lot of fun.

"We had a pretty quiet Christmas at home. On Sunday (Christmas Eve Eve) some friends in our ward invited us to go caroling. We were out until about 10 o'clock.

"Monday (Christmas Eve) Arlynda went in the morning to help a friend who is moving clean out her house. The kids and I played games (memory, arimaa and chess). Later the lady whose house they were cleaning offered to take everyone who helped to lunch, so Arlynda went with them, but then Christmas Eve traffic was so bad that they were stuck for a while. After Arlynda was finally able to get home we all played Settlers of Catan together.

"Once it got dark we had our Christmas Eve dinner. We had Mediterranean-ish foods like olives and feta cheese and some flat bread (well, OK, tortillas). It was nice to have a simple meal on Christmas Eve that we didn't have to spend a lot of time on. We tried to pretend that we were on the road to Bethlehem a couple of thousand years ago, but the kids didn't really want to play along. They did like that we ate by candle-light.

"After dinner we watched our Christmas Pageant that we had filmed earlier in the month. Then we got a new Little People manger scene and so we talked about each of the figures that we got and their significance in the story.

"Abigail had gotten a vial of reindeer food from one of her friends. The directions say to sprinkle it outside on Christmas Eve and when Santa's reindeer get within 100 miles of it they will smell it and come directly to your house. So we followed the directions. I guess that it worked because in the morning it was gone.

"The kids went to bed without a fuss and as far as I could tell they went right to sleep (maybe this concept of keeping them up a little on Christmas Eve Eve is a pretty good one). I couldn't sleep so well (I never can, you know). I was awake by 5am and got up and made breakfast, but when it was almost ready no one was up so I went back to bed. I got up again at 7am and finished breakfast and was banging around and making noise and finally the kids got up at around 8, I think. We always have breakfast before opening presents and our kids have never complained about it. We had apple-yogurt muffins and sausage for breakfast.

"After breakfast the kids passed out our gifts and we opened them. We got Ratatouille (the movie, not an actual bowl of stew) and so we watched it. Then Arlynda put our turkey in the oven and I whipped up mashed potatoes and baked sweet potatoes and threw together some packaged stuffing and Arlynda baked some frozen rolls and with the kids made an apple pie and in just a couple of hours we had a Christmas dinner all ready! It was good and I was surprised that we could throw it together so fast.

"Later, I took the kids on a walk. On Christmas Eve Bailey had wanted a toy to push around (Lucy had a doll stroller and Abby had a popper but there was nothing for Bailey to push) so I took an old roll from wrapping paper that had all been used and I punched a couple of holes in the bottom, then I stuck a pencil through the holes and cut out two cardboard wheels and stuck them on the pencil. When we went on our walk Bailey brought his homemade toy. I kept thinking that neighbors would see us and think that it was the only toy that he got for Christmas, which made me laugh. Later we played Zooloretto and finally we went to bed, exhausted from a long day. It was a fun Christmas. It was nice that it wasn't too hectic, but we missed being with family."

Thank you, Jamie