CHRISTMAS PART THREE

Plan 3:  Christmas morning at our house with just Nathan's family.  Becky and Charles wanted to have their own little family Christmas in their own home and then come over later in the day to join us for all-day snacking and games and more family time (as well as open their presents from us).  

All of this went as scheduled.  

Grandma was up early and finally around 6:30 began to hear a few giggles and some movement downstairs. Colleen had them all dressed, sock curls bouncing and smiles big when it was finally time to be allowed upstairs!

Please, can we come up now??

This little family taught me a great lesson.  We had all agreed to be frugal and simplified in our giving this year.  And Nathan's girls were absolutely delighted with the simplest things:  a bag of Cheetos,  a foam rubber crown.... garage sale bargains of CD's and books.  It felt so good to know they didn't need the latest gadget that all the flyers have been telling us that our children really HAVE to have!  The fun is in the unknown and in the opening.

And they took special joy in having made presents for each other and for having written notes and crafted things at school and pre-school.

Colleen had taken time with each of the girls to make spool dolls for their sisters.  They were really cute!

I can't even count the times Amaya exclaimed, "I just love this!"

Gideon loved all the rattling paper and crawled around between everyone grabbing at each newly-opened gift.   He (and all the rest of us) liked that Grandpa got LOTS of chocolate in his Santa Sock.

Noelle, who really likes to do everything that Amaya does, was especially excited with her gift:  a pretend pair of glasses that would match the real ones Amaya started wearing earlier this year!  

Fun gifts from us:  

1 - Nathan's license plate cover that says "I'd rather be playing Frisbee Golf"

2- Colleen's bacon fix:  A cookbook "101 Things To Do With Bacon" along with a full piggy bank labeled "Colleen's Bacon Bucks".

Plan 3 begins to unravel. The mess gets picked up and organized, the traditional caramel monkey bread rolls come out of the oven and the girls settle in to playing with some of their toys as we await the arrival of the Grafs.   But then we make the mistake of once again checking the weather reports on our I-phones.   Forecasts for the Nevada/Idaho corridor tomorrow (the projected departure day) do NOT look good.   And suddenly the decision was made to go NOW!   

     What???   What about our game day and all this food we have here????   No, no, no!!!!   

     But, yes, yes in my heart.   I knew they were making the right decision.  It is no fun to travel in snow.  They had already dealt with that coming down!  One of those times when we need to let our expectations go and adjust even when we don't like it one bit!

     Nathan and Colleen sprang into action, organized, whirled about and by 11:30 were out the door, just after the Grafs arrived and we all got our goodbye hugs.   We all sort of stood there looking at each other wondering what just happened!   A whole lot of fun and energy left with them.... 

     But there was still plan 3 part 2 to have:   Christmas morning with the Grafs.     (Nathan's family made wonderful time, were ahead of the storms all the way, and made it home just before the snow started.  So we were very grateful for that!).

Audrey was bouncing up and down from the excitement of Santa bringing them "the coolest present E...V....E....R...!!!!"   It was a small scale animal stable (she called it a farm) and was just right for their horses and farm animals.   In fact it was large enough that suddenly I saw Ethan and Tara, Audrey & Noelle all inside of it!!   It IS pretty wonderful!   It is visible in this picture to the left.

     

A fun moment happened when Audrey went to get Grandma a pillow out of the Dominican Republic chest and found to her surprise that Morian was inside there!!!   Morian is Audrey and Ethan's Elf on the Shelf who did funny, crazy things all Christmas month, but sadly, had left their house on Christmas Eve morning to go back to help Santa.   He had his arms around two Santa stockings and left a note telling them, "Ha, ha, I fooled you.  You thought I left but I had to come to your grandma's house and sneak into this trunk to leave you some Christmas surprises."    He further stated that now that Christmas was here he magical powers were all gone for a while and it would be all right for them to hug him goodbye if they wanted to.

I wish I could have recorded both her face and her hesitation and what bordered on confusion!  She was still afraid to hug Morian because they knew they couldn't do that when he was at their house.   She decided not to touch him right then....but later that afternoon she was carrying him around.

With Nathan's family gone the food menu was reduced considerably.  We sort of all gave in to our Christmas tiredness, but still had a fun day playing with kids, games with each other and just visiting.  Charles bustled about re-installing our Roku to a different TV than the one Nathan had installed it on.  (That was my Christmas present to Dad and me. Since we no longer have cable this seemed like a great alternative for watching a variety of movies when we want to....though, admittedly we don't watch movies very often at all).

Aria kept us all happy with her ever-present grin and easy nature;   Ethan was all boy again today and loved playing with his newest spiderman toy.     

     At the end of this trilogy of Christmases we were content and happy that we had been able to have all of the kids with us and bask in their friendship.   We are grateful for simple things these days.  Don't know if 2013 will bring financial relief, but we have all learned good lessons about austerity measures and filtering out what are "wants" versus "needs."     We are grateful for our life, that we still have a home, that our kids are parenting well and enjoying us too.    What more can we ask for???

   On to a successful new year !!

CHRISTMAS IN SHIFTS

     You don't always get what you plan.  But it can still be OK.
Plan 1:   Have an early Christmas with Peter and Jill and Aly when they came to Vegas on business the week BEFORE Christmas.  (Peter had to be back up on the snowy mountain with his recalcitrant youth on Christmas day).   Check.   They came; we had a nice visit (as was noted in the last post) and....we did indeed have a Christmas complete with nice breakfast and nice dinner the night before.

Monday, Dec. 17th, Santa found Aly so he could leave her sock full of goodies.

This child knows how to act delighted about everything!  "Yay, my own princess camera!"

Had fun finding this T-shirt for our mountain man 

(who is always counseling his youth to think outside the box).  So far Peter has loved his outdoors time.

Jill spent a lot of those few days with us with fingers and crochet hook  a whirlin'.  She got the afghan done for her sister-in-law's new baby just in time!!

Plan 2, part A:  The Twin Falls contingent arrives, spends the night, then take off for California for Colleen's brother's wedding.   Check!  They got here early evening, tired and a little tense from driving through enough snow to make things not so fun.  But we ate, played games and enjoyed them for the short amount of time before they left again.

Plan 2, part B:  Sunday,  the Nathan Austins were to arrive BACK from L.A. early in the afternoon.  Umm.  Here the plan begins to unravel!  Arrived indeed, but, NOT early afternoon because of incredible traffic congestion.  Not such great weather either, but here at last, again, safe.  Our friends the Lippmanns were here to greet them too and have a Lasagne dinner.   The plan felt further unraveled because the momma of the family didn't have her calendar right in her mind.  I thought that MONDAY was Dec. 23rd and that we would have another whole day of games and chatting and lovin' on grandkids before Christmas Eve.   But, no!   Victor had to keep reminding me that Monday was Christmas Eve and I really would have one less day with the Idaho Austins!!  Bummer!

Plan 2, part C:  Participate in the annual Christmas Eve Breakfast Buffet!  Check!  That went well.  Headed off to Green Valley Ranch Casino where we were given a long row of tables and the kids had a ball watching the waterfall-on-windows feature and coloring and running back and forth on the benches. 

Note waterfall feature on window at the back of the room. I like it when other people feed me!  Makes a calmer day!   Lippmanns joined us for this event too and later back at the house where the guys played Settlers of Catan and the girls chatted.  The kids all played together remarkably well for most of the time!

Prime rib dinner was sort of a bust  (probably NOT a very good cut of meat, and done in a roaster oven since I didn't trust my convection oven not to broil it).....  but we had fun afterwards doing the Christmas story with the kids.

Mary and Joseph (Audrey and Ethan), ride in on donkey Becky.

Joseph asks:  "Do you have any room in your Inn for us??"  

(Who could resist those pleading eyes?   Poor Joseph, didn't even get a costume!)

And an angel (Noelle) appeared unto the shepherds 

The casting department was a little low on shepherds this season.  (Amaya &  Colleen)

And the shepherds went to see Mary and Baby Jesus (Tara) where he(she) lay all "swallowed" in a blanket.

And the Wise Guys came too - to bring them gifts of trolls and lovely toys. 

(Yes, Charles is Senior Wise Guy.)

When narrator Nathan finished the story, each of the 5 children unwrapped a separate baby Jesus which they were directed by Grandma to take into the other room where all the nativities were, and - like the Wise Men - they were to seek the manger that belonged to each set and place the baby inside.  

Amaya got the very tiniest one that went in the Igloo dog sled manger acquired in Alaska many years ago.

Christmas Eve came to a close.  A beautiful, relaxed and fun day.  But little people were beginning to be very tired, so the Grafs took off for home and bed.  The girlos in Nathan's family unwrapped their new Christmas pajamas and got their "sock curls" ready before heading downstairs for a last few minutes (hour)of giggling and silliness before sleep finally overtook them.   

Noelle with her sock curls all set and happy with new jammies.

And some time in the night a stranger came into the house and filled the room with stockings of goodies & oranges and little toys!   How DOES he do that???