December 24th-30th

(12/24) Wee, Christmas!  We're headed to my cousin's house tonight for dinner with Nanan's family.  There are about 25 of us, and I have the youngest of the bunch.  It went about as I expected - the littles gorged themselves on hors d'oeuvres and then didn't want dinner, choosing instead to run laps around the house.  I just left my plate and grabbed a bite when I could.  They lasted until 7:30p, which is about an hour later than I thought.  D told us "Nigh-nigh DDs" allll the way home. I think J zonked out for a bit, but both were awake when we got home, hours after their bedtime.  

(12/25) Merry Christmas!  The littles "slept in" and I had to wake them so we could be at Granddad's by close to 8:30a.  C was up relatively early, and he opened his gift from Santa (a guitar) and his stocking. Dad worked this morning so his coworker could spend his first Christmas morning with his son.  Very nice!  We missed him at breakfast and while opening presents, but I sent him pictures and we chatted throughout the morning.  Santa picked a house with four locking doors for the twins, and a kidlet tablet.  J was hilarious - he would only open packages with red paper, and got very upset when we ripped anything else.  He is very careful with his books, and I can only imagine he thought we were ripping things we shouldn't be.  After the first round of presents, we had a yummy breakfast and then went back for more, plus stockings.  We were all quite spoiled! I took the littles home for a nap, and the boys were making so much noise, I thought they were ready to go back.  Well, it turns out that it was just J that was making all that noise.  I brought him downstairs and he quietly read books with the Tag reader for about 45 minutes while his brother slept.  I fell asleep too because he was so quiet!  I woke D later and we headed back to Grandma's house for dinner.  Oma & Opa arrived, as did Dad, and we had a lovely dinner, and more gift opening.  We headed home after a very fun and long day and put all the kids to bed.

(12/26) Today is Christmas with Nanan, Oma & Opa, Uncle Jake & Aunt Amber.  Dad made us a yummy breakfast and I got to cleaning while the littles slept. I dumped out the little's toy box and did a whole lot of decluttering. I took out several baskets of toys and shelved them for another time and de-cluttered the main floor.  Dinner was awesome, the company fun, and it was probably a good thing that we ate in shifts, since my house is a bit cramped for so many people at the table.  But we made it work.

(12/27) Today, my mission was to get after C's room. It looked like a bomb went off before I was through, but after three hours of work, it looks awesome now!  I took out the bookcase in his room, went through all the kids' books and divided them up based on which room they should be in.  The board and little bit books went into the twins' room along with the bookcase I removed from C's room and the rest remained on the new shelf Dad put together for him.  It looks great in there, but I know it'll last all of a day or two before it goes back to the tornado that it usually is.

(12/28) No hockey today meant a low-key morning for us. We played with Play-doh, and the twins didn't eat... much.  Sarah came by to grab C at lunch for an afternoon of scrap-booking.  After the littles went down for a nap, I plopped myself on the couch to read, and promptly fell asleep.  After the littles woke, we packed up and headed to grab Sarah & Desy, and went over to Grandma's for "kids dinner," where all the high school friends of us kids gather for dinner.  Desy got the lucky job of minding the kids while I had three uninterrupted hours of conversation.  Bliss! C stayed behind at Jordan's and the littles did a great job hanging out downstairs with Des.  

(12/29) Day of sloth for us today, and it was heavenly.  The littles slept late, ran laps around the island for fun and played with all their toys.  I found a magnetic draw & erase board up in C's room yesterday and brought it down for the kids. I've been writing down letters for D, he identifies them, erases them and then claps and cheers for himself.  So cute!  

(12/30) Happy Monday!  Back to work with me today, half day tomorrow, and then off for New Year's.  C is off this week and will be bumming around with his brothers.