Someday the holidays will be ours again

... whether that day will come while my husband is selling meat to a world that loves to eat meat at holidays, I'm not sure. I've been promised (by both the husband and the husband's boss) that next year will be better. So I will just have to hope that next year Santa honors my request that all I want for Christmas (and Thanksgiving, for that matter) is for the lead-up to Christmas (and Thanksgiving) to be less stressful for my husband, for strangers to stop yelling at him on a daily basis for no good reason (for example, getting two more pounds of meat than you requested on your web order because OH MY GOD WHAT WILL YOU DO WITH LEFTOVERS??), and for us to be able to enjoy ourselves a little as a family without the phone ringing off the hook (off the shelf? there really is no hook in this modern cellphone era). Wow. I should just go back and delete that whole paragraph, it is so poorly written. But it is late and I am tired and there is still Christmas to write about.

Christmas itself was really quite peaceful and wonderful. Actually the days leading up to it were nice, too, in between the moments that Danny was getting yelled at. We had Cousin Jason and his girlfriend Chloe stop by quite unexpectedly with presents for the kids, and carolers stop by somewhat more expectedly but still very much a treat for us. We had a trip to Winter Fairyland, the one time of year they let you in after dark to Fairyland, where my mom had just gotten us a membership for Jack's birthday, and Jack was just tickled to get to see the fairytale houses all lit up with Christmas lights, and to ride the carousel and watch the Velveteen Rabbit puppet show and stay up way past his bedtime. And we had the Christmas pageant at St A's on Christmas Eve, in which Jack played the role of sheep and his friend Noah (who is a little older and wiser than Jack, and not to be confused with baby Noah, who really isn't a baby anymore so it could get confusing) played the role of Jack's personal shepherd to make sure he made it to all the right places at all the right times.



I got the whole pageant on video and Jack wanted to watch it as soon as he got back to his pew. I'm not sure it's good practice to let your kid watch videos during church, but if the sound's off and it's not bothering anyone and it keeps them quieter than anything else does AND it's videos of church anyway, that can't be bad, can it?

Christmas morning was very exciting. Sadie got up way too early and Melissa and Bill gave us the best Christmas present we could hope for, taking her away from us until Jack woke up so we could sleep in. And Jack didn't wake up until almost 9am, which is unheard of! I don't know if you can actually be thrilled *while* you're sleeping, but if you can, I was. So we had a lovely and leisurely Christmas morning of opening presents and nibbling on treats between presents.



Everyone seemed pleased with their booty, especially Jack whose head almost exploded upon opening a huge box of dinos we'd picked up a few months before from a garage sale across the street and had been saving. He was speechless for a few moments, just staring at them. It is an obscene amount of dinos. And they're all plastic and full of BPA and pthalates and all kinds of nasty stuff we don't even know about yet because they're all made in China, so all the careful careful work we've done of acquiring expensive little toy animals made in Portugal or other benign places is now all for naught. But I told him Sadie is not allowed to touch his dinos until she can keep things out of her mouth and until then she should continue to chew on killer whale and walrus et al. So we'll see how well we do with that. (Poor second child. Hope we don't give you cancer, Sadie!) But enough about that! After our delightful morning that stretched into the afternoon, we headed down to San Jose to celebrate with my grandma and the rest of the family. She made a huge feast, of course, and everyone sat around and ate themselves silly. And talked, and laughed, and teased each other, and played with kids. Sadie had everyone in stitches because her open mouth astonishment face has reached a new level of "look at me, I'm adorable!" I think she and Kris sat for about 15 minutes making faces and gasping at each other. I'm sure it's only a matter of time until she's telling him stories like another little girl he may remember, with a certain flair for the dramatic. (Hint for those of you who missed out on the "...and SUDDENLY!" stories: that's me.)



I wish holidays came around more often, because I love how they bring family together and I love this family when it's all together. And even if getting to the holidays was/is/will (hopefully not) continue to be a little bit stressful, it's worth it now that we're here.  Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night.