Almost Christmas!

Christmas is almost here and I'm getting really excited.  This will be the first time since Maximus was 3 months old that we will be *home* for Christmas. (I consider home to be the house I live in with my husband and kids).  I am sooo excited!  I don't particularily enjoy traveling for the holidays - especially with kids.  It always ends up not so much fun for Mommy (although I always enjoy seeing family), as Daddy inevitably takes a break from parenting and... pretty much everything else.  I'm excited to start our own traditions and see for the first time the kids' eyes light up in the morning when they find their stockings.  I want to paddle about in my jammies and drink delicious coffee, sit on the couch with Nic (I will be banning all electronics) and watch my clean house slowly get destroyed by two little boys playing with new toys.

We'll be opening our presents on Christmas Eve - that's a tradition from Nic's family.  In my family we always opened 1 Christmas present Christmas Eve, got stockings sometime during the night and opened presents after lunch Christmas Day (our BIG meal for the day).  It always took us HOURS to open presents as we all would open 1, starting with the youngest.  We decided to keep Nic's tradition of opening gifts Christmas Eve (that way when we move back closer to family we can potentially go to extended family's home on Christmas Day) and keep my family's tradition of sneaking stockings to the kids' rooms in the middle of the night for them to find when they wake up.

I have so many fond memories of trying to stay up late enough to catch Dad bringing my stocking to my bed, but I never once made it!  But we would all wake each other up EARLY morning and look at what we got, and then go back to sleep.  In the morning we would take everything to my parents' room and show them (as if they didn't know!... well, Mom says she never could remember since there were so many  of us!)  Hopefully that can be something special for the our kids, too :)

Last year, since we were technically homeless, we didn't get the kids or each other much for Christmas, so it was nice this year to actually go shopping and get them things they'll actually like, instead of just what I can find at the dollar store so they can have something to open!  When they're young, it's not so much the gift, but the act of tearing the paper and seeing what's inside... now that they're older, they know things that they want and I can't wait to see their faces when they see that they actually got it!  Maximus always asks for EVERYTHING for Christmas when we're at the PX/BX... and we always say *maybe.*  So it actually wasn't too hard to find something they'll like :)

Christmas Eve we'll go to a candlelight service at 6pm at the Okinawan Lutheran Church... there's a potluck afterward but I don't think we'll stay otherwise it would get too late to open our gazillion presents :-)  We'll probably have a late lunch and then eat lil' smokies, cheese and crackers, summer sausage, apple cider, egg nog and cookies for dinner after church at home, while opening our presents.  We'll see how it goes... hopefully we don't encounter any meltdowns with the kids. I'll have to make sure I give them a nap...

Christmas Day we'll have Vin and his girlfriend over.  Nic's going to see if any of the single marines in his unit want to come over - no one should be alone on Christmas and with our kids running around, it's sure to make anyone feel at home :)  We'll eat dinner at 1ish: Ham, corn, peach jello, cheesy potatoes, Chocolate pecan pie, baked beans, bread pudding, strawberry-banana pie (I usuallly make Nic a strawberry-rhubarb crisp, but there's no rhubarb on this island!!)...  We'll also have sugar cookies, gingerbread cookies, and cinnamon twists (more for breakfast - the twists, not the cookies, hehe).


We made cookies yesterday.  I waited until Nic got home to roll it out with the boys, bake them and decorate them.... Nic was interested in making the icing, but that was about it... so I think from now on I'll just make it with the kids and not wait for him to come home. It didn't end up being the family-time experience I was expecting....  I ended up missing the boys decorating because I had to feed Elora... I told Nic to videotape for me and he didn't.  :(  I was pretty upset over that.... By the time I was done feedin Elora, the boys were in the tub and there was a HUGE mess for me to clean up.  Oh and Nic was asleep  on the couch.  So I finished decorating alone (Elora was sitting next to me), which wasn't what I had in mind!  The kids dumped all the water out of the tub (ok... not all , but a lot!), so I threw them in their bed and spent the next 1.5 hours cleaning, fed Elora AGAIN and then put her to bed.... and THEN Nic woke up.  How convenient....

At 10pm he wanted to watch a movie (the Green Zone) and then we finally went to bed (I was barely awake)... not shortly after that, Maximus came into our room and Elora woke up (not usual, she usually sleeps 12 hours straight at night) so I fed her and finally got her back to sleep an hour later.... Maximus came back to our room and At 4 Elora woke up again so I fed her and she cried until I got her back to sleep at 6 (or course Nic is sleeping through all this)...  The boys woke up this morning at 8:30, Elora at 9.  FUN!  I think I'm going on strike tonight and Nic can do everything!!

He's lucky I love him :-)