Merry Belated Christmas!!

Okay so my intentions were to have our Christmas Eve celebration at our home put Anna to bed then blog a bit. As you know this was not the case. Anna has been not feeling well this earlier this week and Christmas Eve night Gerard and I started to come down with the same cough, aches and pains. I was very lucky and got called off so I did not have to go into work at 1 am. My friends at work will never know just how grateful I am that I was able to be the call off person this year. I really do think that I owe them big. Dana as always thank you for working both Christmas Eve and Christmas day (her birthday) as you do every year.

At the last minute the Christmas Eve celebration grew when Gerard's family decided that they would rather spend it with Anna out our home then not with us. So we only had a small crowd of 16 plus Hans and Anna. Oh by the way I did have a random stranger for Christmas Eve. He was a very nice man that my sister knew from her childhood that she has not seen for over 35 years. The poor guy drove up from Florida and I am quite sure he is freezing. If you have not seen the weather we have at least 3-4 inches of snow right now with more expected.

Last year I ordered food at the last minute. This year since it was only my family and a more manageable 10 I had planned on cooking but when I figured it was going to more I picked up the phone and ordered up the meal.

The week leading up to Christmas Eve was pure chaos around here. Work was usually long and hard but I am thinking now it was the stress of the holidays that made it feel like that for me. Next year I will do more earlier so that I can avoid some of that feeling of being stressed.

Everyone piled into my home around 3 pm while we waited for dinner to warm up we unwrapped gifts. In past years I have gotten some interesting gifts from little children but nothing was funnier then being the one who got to help wrap those funny gifts. As Anna and I wrapped her gifts for her family we talked about the gift, why it perfect for that person here is the interesting part once they were all wrapped she was still able to tell me who they were for based on the shape of the package. I had wanted to get a picture of her giving her gifts out but with 16 people in my small house you can imagine why I was not able to do so. I was able to get a picture of her Papa opening his gift.

She loves him so much and that makes me so happy. She talks to him as she is playing even if he is not here which I think is too cute. If you can not tell he got a #1 Grandpa mug.



Mrs. Claus looked through her fireplace and saw that the celebration was in full swing at our house so she dropped off a note, special PJs for Anna & Hans and socks for the adults. Believe it or not we were all in bed and asleep by 8 pm.


Anna woke up at 9 am the following morning to find out that Santa did indeed come to our home through the night. Now warning here, you all are getting unedited pictures of Anna with her Muppet style hair that she has every morning.


Her big gifts were a few different sets of Calico Critters along with the townhouse. She also got a Baby Alive that eats and drinks, I guess Santa could not resist seeing her face when she had to change a dirty diaper. Her response was priceless. We fed the baby food and a bottle then I told her the baby's pants needed to be changed. Shocked is a good way to describe her reaction followed by "GROSS!"





Anna had about two thirds of her presents opened yesterday, all completely played with but by 7 pm we were all out cold. At about 4 am Anna woke up to ask "Santa coming to town?" followed by "Go Giants" to include a fist pump then she was back to sleep. For the record we are Seahawk fans so I am thinking Uncle Eddie and Papa have gotten to her because they are the Giant's fans.

This morning Anna discovered there were still presents under the tree. The most played with present today was the little white dog that walks on a leash. I will admit that I think it is the best toy Santa brought her, all the fun of having a dog without the unfun stuff.


Today the snow if falling and I love it! When ever the snow fell in 2009 I got wonderful news about Anna. Gerard had intended on staying home with us but was called out to our rental property to change the hot water heater. He did stop home to shove us out once and Anna insisted on helping. She loves the snow as much as I do.


I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas. This is one I will remember forever. We had a beautiful day.