random Christmas moments

I need to blog these before I forget them, because you know this is my cyber baby book.  Maybe I should get out Lily's baby book and actually write something in it before her 2nd birthday in a month.  Quite the overachiever I am.

We've had a great Christmas.  Full of family and love and fun.  The kids actually slept until their normal wake-up time, which was nice since we were up until about midnight the night before, wrapping gifts and hanging with my sisters who are in town.

A sidenote here:  if you have sons, for the love, please teach them to wrap gifts.  As a spent a few hours the past two nights wrapping 100% of our gifts, I wished that my husband was adept at gift wrapping.  He typically bribes one of my sisters to wrap my gifts.  This year, we only got each other one small gift since we need to spend a little money on our house.  I requested a book from him.  {i know, if you clicked on that link, you aren't surprised}  I insisted that HE wrap my one gift.  Which he did. 

And when I opened it this morning, it was still shrink wrapped to the cardboard with the invoice inside.  He claims he wanted to disguise the gift.  The one thing I SPECIFICALLY asked for.

So mother's of sons, please teach your offspring to wrap gifts.  So that they can join in on the hours of wrapping at Christmastime.  It will be a huge blessing to their future wives.  I may actually start a free community class for men, teaching them to wrap gifts.

I won't bore you with the play by play of the day, but these are the moments I want to remember...

Gracie falling in love with two more dogs...which she promptly named after the dog we had for three days, and our friends new puppy whom she loves.

Gracie & Lily getting their groove on to Justin Beiber with their cousins.

My nephew and daughter attacking their grandma in joy because they got gifts they really wanted.

After shooting off a new marshmallow gun, Gracie put one hand on her hip, the other hand in the air and said "I'm awesome."  Yes baby, you are! 

Lily...well, she was a wreck today.  She just didn't know what to do with herself!!  It was a lot of commotion that she didn't necessarily understand, and she was mostly interested in what everyone else was getting.  I purchased just two items for her stocking stuffers.  She doesn't understand it all anyways.  The baby bottle I bought broke and I had to throw it away.  I felt bad that there would just be a ball in her stocking, so I decided to put a toy cell phone in that she's been playing with for a few days.  My sister found that hysterical.  Hey--just being resourceful.

I stopped myself from putting the kids leftover Halloween candy in their stockings when I realized I hadn't bought any for them.  I should have just done it.  Miss Rose expressed extreme disappointment tonight that Santa didn't bring her any candy, but he did bring candy to her friends. 

Mind you, we don't do Santa in our house.  She's only learned about him from friends, TV, movies and the like.  But she has decided he is real, and she gets angry if we insinuate otherwise.  It's like a personal offense to her.

Before bed, as the nightly meltdown was occurring, she said the toe socks she got in her stocking were stupid and Santa shouldn't have bought them for her.  Bean said "hey, don't say that, someone had to spend money on them."  To which she retorted, "nobody bought them.  Santa's elves SEWED them."

Oh my.

These are the moments to remember though.

We were so blessed to be able to give, to our children, our family, our friends.  And so blessed with what we received as well.