One very busy Christmas

I'm late, I know, but Merry Christmas to all! It was a very, very busy Christmas around here, and I need a nap right now a lot more than I need to be back at work:-)

Munchkin had a great visit with Frenchie, and as I mentioned, it was nice to have him around. They were, as always, really well behaved and just basically a lot of fun. They babysat the girls all by themselves on Saturday night, which is probably the most effective birth control I know of;-)

Saturday was dinner with The Boy's high school friends, which we do before Christmas every year. We mixed it up a little bit this year and went to what I would call a "grown-up obstacle course" before dinner...kind of a toned down version of the show Wipeout. It's...um...not quite as much fun as that sounds:-). First, it is really hard, and second, the falling seems to hurt a little more than you might expect. Well, at least that's what I heard...since I didn't actually fall at all...(to fall, I would have had to have tried the parts that you can fall off of). It was fun, but I wouldn't rush back to do it again...and I can't imagine the place will be open very long before the mounting injuries lead to some legal actions! (Rumors of a woman breaking her ankle the day before were interesting:-)).

Sunday was Big Sis' birthday:-) Yay! We took the girls to the playground in the morning to get them good and tired out so they would take long naps. Munchkin and I took Frenchie to the airport and then we headed back home and got everyone packed up and dressed for birthday dinner. We have done this basically every year, but it is definitely a more casual event than it used to be, mostly because of the growing number of children! The girls were great...ate like champs (they always do) and never got cranky, but got tired enough to fall right to sleep when we got home.

Christmas Eve was more of the same...exhaust the girls in the morning so they would take an early nap and be ready for dinner. Papa Bear, Big Sis and Smoking Hot Roommate requested that The Boy, Munchkin and I come over a little bit early, where they proceeded to give us yet another enormously generous and incredibly flattering gift. Technically it didn't cost a penny, but it was a gesture that almost makes me a little flustered to think about, and will require an awful lot of effort from all of us that we might earn just a portion of the honor. So, many many thanks, again, to my pretend family for being generous beyond belief with their time, love and thoughts.

Dinner was at Big Sis' house, and was a fairly gigantic undertaking...this year it included not just all of us, but also many of our in-laws, a variety of Big Sis and Smoking Hot Roommate's cousins, two co-workers of The Brain Surgeon's who couldn't get home for Christmas and even some "extended in-laws" (like Twin Sister's father-in-law). I think the grand total was something like 40 people...quite the big deal!

The two best decisions she made were: 1) to not bother and try to cook this herself, and 2) babysitters! Three teachers from day care that don't celebrate Christmas came over to lend a hand with the large number of children. That was a big help.

Santa came on Christmas morning, which was really fun. The girls didn't quite "get" Santa, but they were aware that he was coming and that he was bringing presents. They woke up kind of late on Christmas Day (two straight late nights!) and were a lot more excited about the Lightning McQueen wrapping paper than they were about the idea of presents. And really, we didn't do much for them...they have plenty of toys and don't really get the whole idea anyway. There were a couple of things for them to unwrap...new puzzles and some Jake and the Pirates things...but almost everything under the tree was, as always, for Munchkin:-)

We went to Twin Sister's for breakfast with The Boy's family. We meant to get there in time to open presents, but we were behind our target of 8:00am and her oldest is five and wasn't waiting for us to get there...she had torn everything open long before we got there, and was already crashing for her Christmas day nap...lol.

Then back to our place and we had the pretend family over for Chinese Food in the afternoon and swapped all of our presents for each other. And that, folks, is an awfully tiring long weekend!!!

Hope yours was filled with as much love as mine!