Christmas

The most wonderful time of the year!!!
Oh man, Summers first Christmas was, per usual, a busy one.
Charlie and I are both children of divorced families which means that we have SEVERAL Christmases every year. Like, 7 of them. I try and limit them to 2 a day, one in the morning and one at night during the week of Christmas. Its my dream to have a huge house with plenty of room to seat both of our huge families along with a big garden out in the back that I pick all of our Christmas dinner veggies from along with chickens and turkeys and maybe a cow. Aaaaah, someday.
Anyway, it was Summers first Christmas and I felt like she was old enough to kind of understand what was happening. She understood opening the presents and really liked eating the paper, which kept her entertained whilst Steve crazily ripped open each present, in a frenzied red faced crazy person manner.
We started off the season with a tree.
I knew that we needed a small one so that my adorable and busy daughter wouldn't rip all the ornaments off and harass the lower half of the tree until it was bald.
We went to Fred Meyer and found the perfect little 2 foot tree complete with its own little tree stand. Steve however, didn't think it was so perfect.
"Mommy! I want this one."
He had found another tree, which would have been fine except it didn't come with its own little tree stand and I really didn't want to buy one.
I tried explaining it to him, just like that but he really wasn't having it. A short lived, silent sobbing fest ensued. I think he gets his dramatics from me, but we have another shared trait, stubborness. I don't typically give in to tears. Especially if they are in tantrum form.
He seemed to forget all that as soon as I let him decorate the tree exactly like he wanted.
I also let them play with the lights which turned into a marvelous photo.
About halfway through this 15 minute photo shoot Steve looked at me and said, "Uh, Mommy these are getting kind of hot. How much longer do we have to sit here?"
Always the safety expert.

We then made some cookies and we all got sick on frosting. Steve is the consummate big brother, always helping and making sure these little girls are happy.

It was getting down to the wire at this point and I felt like we really needed to kick it into high gear. We had done Black Friday, cookies, tree, baked with my family. I had made myself seriously nauseous on buckeyes and we had donned our gay apparel for an ugly Christmas Sweater Party.

That was fucking hilarious, Charlies sweater said 'Grandchildren warm the heart'. When I bought it, I ran inside and was in tears trying to tell Charlie about his sweater. I kept randomly breaking into giggle fits and finally he put it on, which resulted in mass hysteria laughter and Charlie wondering what the hell my problem was. It was a good one. We only had a week to go until Christmas so I decided that we should take a trip out to Country Farms as they had live reindeer. I was pretty excited and so was Steve. What a let down.

Someone should alert PETA because these poor things were sad. They were in this teeny tiny area, really only fit for one and the kids kept ramming their hands inside the gate and screaming. The poor things were terrified or pissed, actually, they looked ready to snap. 

I looked at Steve and he looked at me and we both agreed the reindeer were probably pretty unhappy.

 Christmas Eve and Christmas Day are both a blur of activity. Getting the kids ready, me getting ready, hustling everyone out of the house, family time, food, presents. Repeat 6 times.
Steve was ripping through presents like the Hulk and at one point, at my Aunts house, I looked over and didn't recognize the face on my son. He was red and sweaty and breathing hard, ripping paper like rabid dog eating whatever rabid animals eat. I had to put a hand on his shoulder and forcefully take the gift out of his hand. He had a mixture of thankfulness and confusion on his face. I made him calm down for a minute and then get back to his presents. It was the Christmas Fever. It overtakes us all sometimes.
Overall, it was a pretty good year. The kids both got so many presents it took me 2 days to clean up the house and try and get everything organized. Try being the key word here.
Its so hard instilling the fact that Christmas is about family and togetherness when they both get so many gifts from so many people. I really had to drive it home to Steve this year. By New Years I would ask Steve what Christmas is about and he would huffily reply, "Being with your family. Uggh, I know."
As long as he can keep saying that I hope that maybe next year he will actually believe it.

 Cheers.