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Friday, December 26, 2008

Christmas

Christmas time is supposed to be a time of getting together with family and friends and being merry and bright. Santa is supposed to come (well if you are of the Christian belief anyway) and bring gifts and all is supposed to be right with the world.

I am going to start off by saying-MAN! Am I glad it's over!!! I am wiped out! Christmas time in our family is a time of chaos and travel-that means we travel everywhere and no-one travels to our house. It's not that I hate traveling, but it really takes a lot out of me when I'm on my way to my 4th party after I have been trying (for the last 3 hours) to make sure a really sugared up 2 year old, who hasn't had a nap, doesn't destroy my Mother-in-Law's house.

Our Christmas usually starts before the actual Christmas holiday. I come from a split family and so this means that we have several gatherings that we are obligated to go to. The first party is usually with my aunts, uncles, and cousins on my Mom's side of the family; this year the party was to be held at my Uncles house on the 21st, unfortunately we were unable to go because Abby had a stomach bug. I like to think of this party as Tropical Storm Rudolph-it's hectic, but nothing compared to the "real thing". After is the calm before the real storm hits-Hurricane Christmas.

On Christmas Eve Jeff, Abby and I opened our gifts between each other and then Jeff and Abby watched a movie while I cleaned up the kitchen (I really didn't feel like watching Robots for the 14 millionth time). Then, after the movie was done Jeff brought Abby upstairs and put her to bed while I finished getting all of the gifts from Santa under the tree an into the stockings. All was said and done by 2am and I was exhausted!

Abby woke up at 8am and when I told her I think Santa came. When she saw the tree, she was very pleased and yelled "DORA!!!!" when she saw a pillow that had some books with it. Then, we read books until Jeff got up. After all of the Santa gifts were opened, we got ready and went over to a friends house where we had some mid morning treats and opened gifts. After the gifts were opened we had to leave right away because we had to get over to my Mother-in-law's house where we had a Christmas meal and then opened more gifts. Which were promptly packed up and stored in the car so we could go to my Dad's house to have yet another meal and open even more gifts. By the end of the evening all 3 of us were exhausted and Abby was gearing up for full meltdown mode so we packed everything up, went home, had some milk, watched a new Elmo movie, and went to bed.

Now most people would be more than ready to swear off any kind of social gathering for at least another 365 days, but we still have 2 more Christmas gatherings to go to; one with my Stepfather and one with my Mom (they are divorced, but he's still our Stepdad). After those 2 are done then I will be able to swear off any kind of social gathering for another 365 days.

I do have to say that we got some really nice gifts and some gifts that we will probably never use, but I really appreciate that the gift giver thought enough to give it. I liked seeing the family and friends and gathering for the happy time, but with all of this, I still have to say that I have one disappointment.

I didn't get any pictures. None. zero. zip. zilch. nada. The batteries were dead in my camera. I did grab the video camera that we bought a couple of years ago, but I wasn't able to get a lot on film as I was very busy helping Abby open gifts.

Oh well, there's always next year!

1 comment:

  1. Oh Bummer no pictures??

    You are making me really glad we had a nice quiet, familyless Christmas.

    I can't imagine being that busy on a holiday. whew. I'm worn out just reading about it.

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