Christmas

We had a quiet Christmas Eve here at home. I talked Andy into taking the kids to Christmas vigil for midnight mass. We ate dinner and then put the kids to bed and then woke them up around 10 pm to get ready. Carols started at 11 pm and then Mass started at midnight. I have to say that the kids behaved wonderfully...even Melina did great with it being so late at night. It was nice to all be there as a family. For the past couple of years Deidra and I just went with my Mom and Jimmie (my brother), so it was nice to have Andy and all the kids there this year. We came home and went to bed and I was the first one up on Christmas morning (6:30 am) and I was so excited to see the kids faces when they opened up their presents that I wanted to go wake them up. Everybody finally woke up a little after 7. The kids were excited about their presents and they were thrilled that they finally got a trampoline! Now to find a weekend where the weather is decent to assemble it. :-) Melina loved the wrapping paper and the bows and it didn't take her long to figure out what she was supposed to do...we still had to help her, but she was doing it by herself a bit too. So precious to watch her and she really loved her presents. She got a baby doll that says "I love you" and makes kiss noises and Melina was giving her kisses back. It was too sweet to watch her.

Mom, Jimmie, and Zach came over around 3 pm and we ate a birthday ice cream cake for Jesus' birthday. We all sang happy birthday to Jesus and ate cake (even Melina). We opened presents together and just spent some time talking and celebrating. It was fun! Low-key this year since we normally have them over for dinner, but Mom didn't want to put that expense on us and she didn't feel like cooking a big dinner herself this year, so she just said for us to go ahead and eat and they'd do their own thing. I felt bad later when Jimmie and I ran to the gas station for soda and Jimmie said that all they had was grilled cheese. We had made a ham and scalloped potatoes and green bean casserole and corn. We were going to make stuffing too, but we forgot. Granted, we made our meal from scratch on Thanskgiving and everything came out of a box for Christmas, but now I wish I would have just insisted that they come over for dinner too. Next year, we'll have to get back to doing that. Overall,it was a great Christmas!