Christmas

Christmas Eve brought us back to the church for our annual Christmas Eve dinner.  My Italian sister-in-law has brought her tradition to this Irish family.  She makes some mean spaghetti and meatballs.  Enough to feed an army...which is almost what we equal. 

We almost didn't go seeing as a nasty sickness had hit my husband and Jillian for several days at this point.  But Doug didn't want us to miss out, so we went, and he was miserable.  He suffered through the dinner, an exciting exchange of white elephant gifts, and the opening of grandma's handmade pajamas for all the grand kids.  A quick clean up after that and we were on our way back home to put the overly anxious kids and my sick husband to bed.  Funny that this is the one night a year they can't wait to be tucked in. Morning can never come quickly enough.

We always make the kids wait for everyone to wake up before we do anything.  So, slowly...one by one they venture into our bedroom and we all just cuddle and wiggle and giggle in excitement, letting the anticipation build. 

I think they were all pleased with what they got.  It was a little sad to have sickies in the house on what is supposed to be one of the best mornings of the year.  Jillian tried her best to enjoy the process, but just wasn't herself.  And Doug, well...he went back to bed.  I made the kids breakfast and watched them play with everything.  We visited with the in-laws next door for a bit and then came back home to quickly get ready for Church.  I love Christmas being on a Sunday...it just seems to fit!

Doug mustered up enough energy to go with us, and we both sang with the choir.  The primary kids sang a few songs that made me all teary-eyed.  It was a simple and lovely program.

The rest of the day was pretty laid back.  We visited some friends for a bit and then came home to eat our Christmas dinner.  I sent the kids to get ready for bed and then realized I hadn't taken a picture of them in their Christmas get-ups. So, I made them change back and snapped a few shots of them.

All in all...it was  a pretty good day.  Filled with sniffles, fevers, smiles, laughter, love and a great Christmas spirit.