Magic

Our first Christmas as a family of four (!!!) was truly magical. Between spending lots of time with family, Madeleine's arrival, and watching the wonder of Christmas through Claire's eyes, this has been a wonderful season!

We started the Christmas festivities on the 23rd with Honey's family. Everyone came to our house in the evening for an Indian feast, then got down to the business of opening presents. And, as usual, we weren't finished until 2 in the morning. We gathered again at Honey and H's the next day for our traditional turkey meal (complete with crackers and crowns!).

After gorging ourselves on turkey, we headed over to Grandma and Grandpa's house for more eating. Both girls took super-long naps, so Mommy and Daddy had fun working on a puzzle with Aunt Jamey and Uncle Jeff all afternoon. After a delicious prime rib dinner, we opened more presents, then headed back to our house to get ready for Santa.

Claire has been excited about Santa since August. And since her first mention of him, she has maintained that he will be bringing her a pink piggy bank with white polka dots and her name written on the side. I had no idea where I could find something like that, but I knew I had to come up with it. Luckily, a friend of Aunt Lou's makes these exact piggy banks, and it finally arrived on the 23rd. Christmas had been saved! Claire woke up on Christmas morning and headed into our room, as usual. Daddy ran downstairs to get the video camera rolling. But Claire didn't want to come down. She was scared of the fact that some strange man had been in our house during the night and he might still be down there! She slowly came downstairs and stared at the goodies waiting for her under the tree. And she couldn't have cared less about the darn piggy bank. When I asked her what her favorite thing Santa brought was, her response was "chapstick". We'll keep that in mind for next year....

After we were finished investigating the Santa presents, we jumped in the car to head to the ranch and our final Christmas celebration with H's family. After another turkey dinner and even more presents, we said goodbye to Aunt Lou and Uncle Chris, then the boys got to work on the olive trees. The deer have been munching the leaves, and Craig had the (good? bad? We'll know soon....) idea of wrapping the trees with saran wrap. I think a mile of the stuff was bought, and each tree now has its own little green house. We came back home on Sat afternoon and enjoyed some long awaited peace and quiet. And sleep!