Family Christmas

Rick left this morning for the bowl trip so we celebrated our little family Christmas last night. Mallory *so* didn’t get into it, unfortunately.

From the moment we found out we were knocked up, I have been fretting over how we handle Santa when we are never home on Christmas morning. The plan was to tell Mallory that Santa knows we won’t be home so he will bring her gifts on the day we tell him to in the letter she will write to Santa. This year was screwy because M & I are going to be home on Christmas morning – but luckily she’s too little so we didn’t have to explain that even though she & I were going to be around, Santa was still going to come early because Daddy was going to be gone. It’s a lot of work being a parent, all this stuff you have to think of!!

I’ll admit we went a little overboard this year, but that was only because I thought we were doing our Christmas in two phases. The original plan was to open our regular gifts here, before Rick left, and then do the Santa gifts in Florida on Christmas Day when Mallory & I got there, so I wanted her to have a nice pile for both celebrations. But then we realized that because M wouldn’t have a clue, we should just do it all here which meant she ended up with an obnoxious amount of presents, none of which she had any interest in opening.

The theme this year is stuff that will be good on the bowl trip plane; plus we have a huge trip planned next month so anything that will keep her occupied on the flights will be my savior. We got her some little tonka trucks and a wooden football player & cheerleader. She also got that LeapFrog laptop thing for babies (we’ll see if she’ll sit still long enough to play with it) and a play cell phone (but genious that she is, she isn’t falling for it…she knows it’s not the real thing. Dammit Jim). There were some alphabet magnets for the fridge (that are going to be retired until she quits taking them off the fridge and throwing them on the floor) and a couple of shirts, including a Black Dog one – she got a BIG grin on her face when she saw the “Buh-pah” on the shirt! (forgive my overabundance of parens in this paragraph).

So, in conclusion – it was the little bottle of lotion that Santa brought me and the canister of pistachios that Santa brought Rick that were her favorites.

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In other news…Mallory is the proud new owner of a double ear infection. This is her third one in about six months. Poor kid. She has had a yucky cold for a week with a really snotty nose which I hope gets better ~ otherwise I feel really bad for all the other folks on the plane because Mallory HATES HATES HATES getting her nose wiped.

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I should go take advantage the pumpkin taking a nap and get some scrapping done.