Christmas

We had such a wonderful Christmas this year. Or maybe I should say “Christmases.” We have a family tradition of always letting our kids wake up at home on Christmas morning. But my little sister was born on Christmas Day. And this year she was celebrating her 21st birthday. So in order to be able to celebrate with her we had to bend the rules a little bit. What we ended up doing was celebrating Christmas early with our immediate family. That way we could do our normal Christmas traditions with the kids and let them enjoy their toys for a whole day before packing everything up and heading down to Southern California. Then we drove down to Grandma and Grandpa’s house on Christmas Eve to celebrate Auntie’s birthday and Santa brought our gifts there the next morning.

Our first Christmas celebration was on December 23rd. Uncle Scott and Grandma Kathy came the night before so they could be there with us in the morning as we opened our presents to each other. We continued our tradition of the advent tree, decorated some Christmas cookies together and had the kids retell the story of Christ’s birth—the reason we celebrate Christmas. Then they were snuggled into their beds, excited to open presents the next morning.

Drew woke up first and waited patiently in the living room with Daddy while I made a special breakfast and Ava continued her beauty sleep. When she finally woke up around 8 we got to open our presents. We try to rotate and watch each person as they open their gift. But Drew was so excited he just kept wanting to open more. Ava was the opposite. She wanted to play with each thing that she opened and had to be convinced to open the rest of her presents. When Drew opened his T-rex mountain (my Black Friday find!) he said “It’s what I’ve been dreaming about!” Oh my gosh he’s so cute I can hardly stand it! He used that line again when he got his HotWheels Double Shift Raceway, something we gave one of his friends for his birthday and that he’s been hoping for ever since. Ava’s big gift from us was a new Princess big girl bike. She loved it! In fact, she followed Drew’s lead and told us it was what she’s always wanted! She rode it around the living room the rest of the morning.






Drew had purchased gifts for the family at his school’s holiday shop. We were curious to see what he picked out for us. He got me a lovely bracelet that says MOM on it. He picked a Princess toy for Ava. And for Dan he bought a model car, flashlight/clock keychain and a guitar ornament. It was so cute to see what he picked out for each of us. What a sweetheart!

Drew with his gift for Daddy

After presents we had breakfast—cinnamon rolls and a yummy breakfast casserole. Then we just hung out and played with our toys. Aunt Marie and Grandma Honey were set to come join our celebration around 2 and we were planning to have an early dinner and do more presents with them. Right about 1:30 Ava threw up. In our bedroom, on the carpet. I hustled her into the bathroom where she threw up again and got about half into the toilet and half on the floor. And some on my new slippers. Somehow I got her clothes off, got her washed off and called Dan to save me without throwing up myself. Thank goodness I have a husband who can take care of cleaning up throw up. Seriously, I don’t know how I can handle things like infected incisions but not the bodily fluids of my own childen. Yuck.

Anyway, my poor baby girl threw up about every 45 minutes the rest of the day. She spent our “Christmas” sleeping in her room, only waking up to cry, throw up and then go back to sleep. It was sad.

In the midst of the sick baby girl, Aunt Marie and Grandma Honey showed up to our party. It was a bummer that Ava had to miss it! We still enjoyed our Italian dinner of homemade lasagna, garlic bread and salad. And delicious desserts that Aunt Marie made. We opened our presents to each other and enjoyed visiting with everyone. Unfortunately, I was slightly preoccupied with a sick Ava and so I don’t have any pictures from that part of our celebration.

Poor sick girl

By 9:45 that night I was getting pretty concerned about Ava and called the on-call doctor. She told us to bring her to the ER if she didn’t stop throwing up. The doctor was concerned about dehydration since I couldn’t get any fluids into her. I decided that she could throw up once more, if it was twice more we’d bring her in. Thankfully she finally stopped. So that night was spent re-hydrating her. She kept waking up wanting something to drink and we only wanted to give her little bits at a time. She made it through to the morning, but still wasn’t acting like herself and she said that her ear hurt. She had mentioned that the day we went sledding and had some symptoms of a cold. So even though we had planned on leaving that morning for Southern California, I took her in to the doctor instead.

To be continued…