We had Christmas Eve with my family here at our house this year.
After we opened presents, we ate and drank. My dad brought this stuff:
It was good – it made me feel like we were back in the Dominican Republic.
After everyone left, we drove around (Rick drove…I wasn’t fit to drive after that tropical sea breeze) and looked at Christmas lights. Mallory kept saying that she wished we had more lights like our neighbors and I told Mallory that putting up a lot of lights is hard work and daddy works a lot during the time you are supposed to put up your lights so we aren’t able to put up tons of lights. So then both kids started saying “they had hard work” (to the houses that had lots of lights) and “they didn’t have hard work” (to the houses that had minimal to no lights).
When we got home – we got the kids ready for bed and put out food for the reindeer. All I could hope was that the kids won’t actually look to see if the oatmeal-mix-reindeer food was still there the next morning, or that some random squirrel or deer or rabbit would come eat it so that it would be gone (it’s 2p on Christmas Day and Mallory hasn’t thought about it…yet).
Mallory wrote a cute note for Santa – she came up with this all on her own, asking only how to spell “holidays”, and letting us know that she put exclamation points after GO BLUE so that it wouldn’t just say “go blue.” but rather “GO BLUE!!!” (she’s just learned about exclamation points in school and it is cute to hear her tell us when she is using an exclamation point, because her voice gets excited when she says “GO BLUE!!!” instead of just “go blue”. This is really hard to explain in type, so hopefully in 40 years, whoever is reading this “gets” it. )
We left out cookies and carrots for the reindeer and the kids were in bed a little late – around 9p.
Mallory has been talking FOR WEEKS about the American Girl doll she is going to get for Christmas. To the point where I almost wanted to return the American Girl doll we had hiding in the basement. She only asked Santa for three things (American Girl doll, Barbies and Barbie crafts). Rick & I aren’t big fans of Barbies, mostly because Mallory said she likes them because of their pretty makeup. American Girl doll has been on her list for about a month (lucky for us), so it was sort of anticlimactic for us when she started telling us the days leading up to Christmas “well, I’m going to sleep with my new American Girl doll that Santa is bringing me”.
Carson said he wanted a football field, so I found a cool football field rug online for him.
In the end, the American Girl doll ended up wrapped and ready under the tree, ready for Christmas morning.
All we could do is go to sleep.