Christmas 2007

I thought last Christmas was chaotic, but the boys were just lumps, content to be where you put them, that was last year. This year brought chaos to a whole new level.

Learning from last year, we decided to spilt our Christmas. We actually celebrated 3 Christmases. We had Christmas and a Birthday celebration with my Mom, and the following weekend we had Christmas with Scott's Mom Carol, and Husband George.

We then made the trek to Sacramento, once there, we celebrated Todd's Birthday, as usual on Christmas Eve, followed by the "grown up" Christmas. There were fourteen of us and a mountain of presents. Thank goodness we started drawing names amongst us kids last year otherwise the mountain could have been Everest like in proportion. As it was, we started opening around 9:30 and it was well after midnight before we were finished and tucked into bed, with visions of sugar plums dancing in our heads. It was nice and relaxing, and we were all very happy with our wonderful gifts.

We had a fantastic Christmas present from our boys, they slept in and we actually had to wake them up in order to have them fed and ready to go before our Miss Madison made her grand appearance. Maddie is a year older than the boys and really understands the whole Christmas thing. Before bed, she left out cookies and milk for Santa and really seemed to listen to her Auntie Mary when she explained that little girls HAD to go to bed on Christmas Eve early because if they were awake when Santa flew over, he wouldn't stop.

Madison, with wide eyes, gingerly made her way into the living room to see what Santa had left for her under the tree. I think I heard a squeal of glee as she saw her Dora ball house. She immediately climbed in, with the boys close at her heels. Ryan and Evan were not as excited by the ball house, but what with what was in the house...BALLS!!! 200 of them!!!! We were then able to move on to other things, at a slow and kid driven pace. We offered presents to be opened, we gave them time to play with things they were really interested in, (ball house) and we did not have the stress of 1000's of gifts yet to be opened and us butting up against dinner.

I'm not kidding on this we've had Christmas Mornings that have lasted WELL into the afternoon, with short breaks for pop tarts and cookies to get us through to breakfast.

I think one of the funniest things was Madison's desire to put all of her opened gifts into her ball house, including this kid sized, musical Dora chair.

The boys enjoyed opening their presents, and I think they understood when we told them this or that gift was for them, but a lot is lost on kids this little. The certainly had fun, but I CAN'T WAIT until next year.

I think we were all patting ourselves on the back feeling pretty good about how well Christmas went. With fourteen adults and three babies under three it could have been a disaster of EPIC proportions, but in all it was just a lovely day!