December 2012

December 23rd, Sunday before Christmas in their Christmas best for church.

December was a great month, one of our best Christmas seasons. Both kids are old enough to understand the deeper meanings of Christmas and to enjoy traditions. We did lots of baking, delivering goodies to friends and family, watching Christmas movies, making lots of crafts, and coloring Christmas pages.

Christmas Eve began eventfully with Rachel, a fever, and a stomach virus. Poor Rachel is the best sick girl around. Rachel seemed to just wake up feeling rotten that day and just cuddled with us on the couch. She seemed to be doing much better that afternoon, so we decided to go ahead with our plans of an Italian dinner out with my cousins for the night. We got to the restaurant and things just went south for my poor girl, culminating in an episode of stomach virus right there at our table. Luckily I had packed a vomit-appropriate bag just in case (that morning she had been complaining of stomach pains) and she had let me know in advance what she thought might happen. I was actually surprised at how quietly and discreetly it all happened. I don't think the people next to us even knew what had happened, gratefully. Obviously after this we left and didn't get to do a Christmas program with family like we had hoped.

Instead we headed home to open pajamas and at least do the traditional pictures in front of the Christmas tree. We read a little from Luke and put the kids to bed since no one was up for much after that. Luckily there weren't too many episodes of stomach illness after that, but we could tell Rachel was not herself all through Christmas. She made the best of it though and really enjoyed cuddling up to watch her new movie the next morning.

Christmas was lovely with the exception of Rachel not feeling well. Her fever was gone by late morning and she seemed to perk up. Our friends, who we had invited over for Christmas dinner previously, decided to still come over that evening (even at the risk of stomach flu), so we had a full house for dinner with all the trimmings. We had the Harmans and the Blacks over, and my friend Tanya even brought the most delicious homemade tamales that we enjoyed for days afterwards (we are talking the real deal here--true Mexican goodness). I've got to learn to make them.

Our anniversary is the 28th, just after Christmas, so it's usually a bit of a trick to get a date in unless we are with our parents for the holidays. This year my cousin Joani offered to take the kids for a few hours so we could go enjoy ourselves for our anniversary. Since Les Mis had just started playing in theaters we decided to grab some good deli sandwiches and sneak dinner into the theater. We loved the movie and were so grateful for generous family. This was our happy 5 years to us anniversary, and we big-time celebrated a little later in March with a trip to NYC (post to come).

A few days later Alden (obviously) caught whatever it was the Rachel had. Luckily none of our friends or family that were around our children caught it though! Alden's version wasn't quite so bad, only lasting about 24 hours, but he was still out for the count for New Years Eve. You know you've reached toddler parenthood when you go to sleep with sick kids at 9 pm on New Years Eve because you just know they'll be up early the next day, if not throughout the night.

I just can't get over how beautiful she is, but also a little sad at how grown up she looks in this picture.

Christmas Eve tradition of opening up new pajamas to wear for the night. 

Yearly pictures in front of the Christmas tree. 

Poor Rach looking a little sick still, but happily holding her baby penguin from brother Alden.

Ollie gets in the picture too!

Had to include a note about all these books. My Mom sent a package with each of these books wrapped and a date on  them so we could open one per day for the whole month of December. I'm a huge book lover (especially good children's lit) so this was a wonderful surprise. We loved reading our new book every day.