Missing Christmas....

Ok, so I didn't totally miss Christmas, but that's how it felt at the time when I was sitting on the stairs watching my kids unwrap their gifts from afar. I spent most of the day Christmas Eve and Christmas day in bed fighting the stomach flu. I say fighting, because I hate hate hate the stomach flu so much that I fight it and resist it until the bitter end. I really think I have a phobia to throwing up. Is there an official term for that? I have it. Maybe because I hardly ever do it so just the anticpation of it makes it worse than it is. Who knows...

Anyway - I didn't spend alot of time with the family over the actually day of Christmas. But we drove to my parents house later Christmas afternoon and after a little more rest I started feeling normal. Although it wasn't totally normal because I didn't want to eat alot which is unusual for me. Kind of convenient I guess. That feeling did go away towards the end of the week and I got to enjoy my mom's Christmas cookies and all the other tempting treats.

So I can't share too much about my kids' reaction to their gifts. Ella got a bike with training wheels, Catherine got a sit-n-spin (which she prefers standing on, fun fun...) they both got a little keyboard with a microphone (very funny to watch them "sing" into it- Catherine just does alot of heavy breathing), Ella got a desk from my parents where she can store all her art supplies and do all her art work. At the moment that's one of her favorite gifts.

It was nice having Christmas day at home. We've decided to try and stay home for the actual day of Christmas as much as possible. But we love seeing family so we pack up and head out pretty quickly for a week long Christmas tour. We headed to Clearfield for Christmas with the Koerber family, which was an event since we pretty much just celebrate Christmas and Christmas Eve all over again. After a few days there we head to Ellicott City for Christmas with the deMontaigne's. After about a week straight of presents I've had to keep reminding Ella that Christmas is over - until next year.

Ella really enjoyed playing with her cousins. Her and her cousin Isaac would head downstairs to the playroom at my parents and just play pretty peacefully until Ella decided she wanted Isaac's Thomas the Train all to herself. Yep, that's right. All the toys that she got from my parents and she wanted to play with Isaac's most prized gift. He was very sweet with her and quite generous but by the end of the visit he was starting to get frustrated. Ella understands sharing but she is only quick to apply it when she wants to play with other people's toys. When I would caution her about not giving a toy back to Isaac, she would respond "Mom, I'm just sharing it". Same thing when she would want to use Catherine's new shopping cart. But if Catherine tried to play with Ella's new toys that "kind" spirit of sharing totally disappeared and it became "That's MINE!". Anyway Catherine had fun trying to keep up with Ella and Isaac and got her first kiss from Isaac one night while they watched TV. I might try to post it because the look on her face is so funny.

While at Matt's parents house Ella got to spend an entire day with Hayden and Sophia -without mom and dad! It was nice for me to see that she was so comfortable with us leaving her with Matt's sister because we don't get to see them that often. Poor Catherine got stuck doing some after Christmas shopping with us!

We were gone for a week and we were all anxious to get home and actually enjoy our presents. Now I have to start going through their old toys and deciding what can be put away. I'm not sure which is a more daunting task, that or taking down the Christmas decorations.

My little bout with the flu aside, it was a really nice Christmas. Each year the kids understand more and more about what is going on and it makes it more exciting for me. One of my favorite things was watching home movies from Christmas' past. Waaaayyyyy past - some from when I was 12 years old! We got so many laughs out of it and a few tears as we got to see loved ones who have passed away (and even my old dog Broozer). It's made me realize how important and special it is to record those events - as annoying as it may be at the time (believe me, it was apparent that there were many times we were annoyed with video camera) it is definitely something I treasure having now.

I can't think of a graceful way to end this post other than....on to the New Year !! Hopefully I'll get some thoughts up about that soon!