Christmas Carnage (Round 2)

Well, we survived Christmas! Woo-hoo! On Christmas eve, we went to an early church service, came home for dinner, read the Christmas story, and did a little activity with the girls. After the girls went to bed, Dakota and I set out the wrapped presents and assembled the not-so-wrapped ones. Here is our nice, pretty "before" picture.


Post Christmas carnage--here's the "after" picture.


Emma was the most excited about all the presents, as we expected she would be. Ashlyn was excited at first, but that faded as she learned she had to "work" to get her new toys and books. (Apparently tearing paper off of unknown objects is just not very interesting to a 20 month old.) So after the stockings and first present, she sat herself over at her bookshelf and, ignoring the rest of us, found some good books to read.


Every once in a while, we'd pull her back over and help her unwrap something. She'd get excited about it and want to play with it or read it right away.


But if we were unwilling to stop what we were doing and spend the next 20 minutes trying to figure out how to remove the ever-lovin' packaging from said toy, she would retreat back to her bookshelf or find some tissue paper to play with.


Emma received many gifts, but the one she seemed to treasure most was a princess music carousel that turns and plays some song we've never heard of.


Well, that was her favorite until it came time to reveal the BIG presents. (The ones we had stayed up late assembling and hiding under sheets.) Emma's big gift was a princess bed tent, and she loved it.


Ashlyn's big gift was a set of Pipeworks made into a slide. Her excitement showed back up again, and it was if she was trying to tell us, "Now THIS is what I was waiting for!"


I'm going to mention here that both of these "big gifts" were things that I had as a kid. I remember the Christmas my sister and I received our bed tents. We had camp outs all over the house in those things. And the Pipeworks provided us hours of entertainment, as we made everything from the slide, to monkey bars, to forts with them. So it was a lot of fun to get to give such memorable gifts to our girls and watch them get just as excited about them.

While the girls explored the tent and tried to find every conceivable way to go down the slide, Dakota and I snuck away to the kitchen to prepare our traditional Christmas brunch. (Yes, that is a phone Ashlyn is holding in the top-middle picture. "Sorry, Grandpa, can't talk right now--it's my turn to go down the slide!"


All the excitement of Christmas morning was a little more than Ashlyn could handle. She started asking for a nap before the brunch was even ready. We took turns keeping her entertained until it was time to eat. After brunch, she crashed hard and slept ALL afternoon. We woke her up when it was time to go to the nursing home for our annual Christmas day visit.

We weren't sure if we'd be able to make it to the nursing home this year. The weather was terrible. We'd had quite a bit of rain for about 2 days before. (But not enough to make much of a dent in the 16-17 inches of snow the blizzard left us the week before.) Then that froze and was covered by several more inches of snow on Christmas day. The plows were trying to keep up with the main roads, and from the looks of things, I'm guessing they were understaffed on account of it being a holiday. But since we'd seen a few other cars go up and down our street during the day, we got the girls all dressed up and hoped for the best.

Our driveway and the street are out there somewhere... near the mailbox maybe?

As soon as we arrived at the nursing home (we did make it in one piece), the girls found a beautiful white, glowing tree that they just had to check out.




Then, as Dakota got set up at the piano, the girls took their baskets of Christmas cards and set out to wish the residents Merry Christmas.


When the dinning hall was full, and they were about to start serving dinner, Emma stepped up to the mic. She had practiced several songs to share with our friends there. She did a wonderful job of singing while Dakota played. I was very much the proud mom.


When she was finished with her last song, "We Wish You a Merry Christmas," all the residents broke out in a chorus of the same, singing it back to us. It was pretty cool.

All in all, I'd say it was a good Christmas. We were blessed and we were able to bless others. I think that made it worth all the trouble and stress of getting ready for the big day.

Oh, but wait! We aren't quite finished. The Christmas trilogy would not be complete for a couple more days. Round 3 with the in-laws was just around the corner. Stay tuned!