Christmas recap :-)

Well, I hope everyone had a VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS :-) Our plans ended up changing a bit, and everything (sort of) worked out in the end. This is how things ended up going. Well, for starters-- for anyone who doesn't know/remember, my husband does snow plowing and salting of business parking lots during the winter. He got a phonecall at 5:30am Christmas morning... one of his buddies who also does snow plowing/salting during the winter called to let him know he was out salting and that it was really snowing hard out. It was hardly doing anything when I went to bed, so that was a bit of a shock. Russ got up to check things out and we had about 1 1/2 inches of snow on our back deck by that time. He ended up having to go out by himself and salt a few parking lots of places that were open at the time. I was pretty upset about the whole thing, being that our kids would be up soon... but really, I couldn't get mad because snow is our livelihood in the winter...it's what brings us income. But still-- I was upset he had to leave!

I ended up staying up after he left....it was about 6am and I figured I'd play Santa and put the gifts under the tree afterall. I got all the kids' gifts under there and put Aly and Will's new train together. By 8am, the kids still weren't up... thankfully, because Russ wasn't home yet. He ended up getting home about 8:40 or so, and I could *just* hear Alyson waking up. I swear Aly and Will must coordinate their wakeup times each night, because a few minutes later, Will woke up.

We opened presents up about 9:15am or so... Aly was LOVING it this year! Will is just starting to sit up really well by himself, so he got to sit on the floor by Aly the whole time she opened presents. She opened his presents too, but by that time, she already had a few of HER presents she really really wanted to play with, so her attention span was zip by that point. I had to keep reminding her that she needed to help Will. Finally, she left about 3 of his presents under the tree so I opened them myself...lol.

After present opening, I made breakfast for everyone... pancakes, sausage, and scrambled eggs with ham and cheese. By the time we got done eating/cleaning up, it was 10:30am. I hadn't gotten a shower yet, the kids needed to get dressed, and we were supposed to be at Russ's mom's house (20 min away) by 11:30am. Yeah....not gonna happen. Russ called her and told her we'd be late. We didn't end up getting there until after 12:30pm. Everyone opened presents then we ate around 2pm. Russ and his family are originally from Virginia, so there are a lot of southern foods at their family gatherings... one being collard greens. I usually avoid them but figured I'd try them for the first time on Christmas. And yeah....not a fan. Blech. But at least I gave them a try....lol.

We stayed up Russ's mom's house til 4:30 or so, then came back home. Aly and Will both fell asleep on the way home, they were SO tired. As soon as we got in our front door, Aly laid on the living room floor for a few minutes...lol. My parents ended up showing up about 6:15pm and stayed til close to 9pm. I tried staying up and getting my nightly dose of Hallmark Channel Christmas movies, but my eyes were slamming shut by 10:30pm. I was asleep by 11 and slept for 9 hours. It was great...lol.

The past few days have consisted of gift exchanges with friends, and attempting to get all toys out of their boxes and into the appropriate child's room...lol. I usually keep some toys in our living room since the kids' bedrooms are both upstairs, so I moved all that stuff back upstairs and replaced them with all the new ones. In the next few days, the "Great Toy Purge" will be taking place. We need to scale down the amount of toys in this household, majorly. I already have a bunch of clothes to give to Goodwill, so maybe we'll add some toys to the mix.

As for tomorrow (well, today, since it IS 1am...) I'm planning on meeting up with my cousin to do some shopping, then I need to go get groceries since it's been almost 2 weeks and we're almost out of everything in this house. My parents got me a gift certificate for the mall, and I CAN NOT WAIT to go out and buy some things for myself. Everything I buy is for the kids, so it'll be nice to treat myself for a change. I'm just hoping the kiddos feel ok tomorrow. My parents are supposed to watch them for the afternoon, but both kids weren't feeling so hot today. They both have runny noses, poor things. Aly is coughing a little, so Russ went and got those Triaminic strips for her (which the pediatrician recommended) and I put the vaporizer up in her room tonight. As for Will, you'd never know he was sick other than his runny nose...he's still little Mr. Happy Baby as usual!

So we'll see how things go in the morning. If the kids aren't feeling so hot I'll just do the grocery shopping and hold off on the "me" shopping. I hate seeing my babies sick :-( Hoping they feel better soon.

Well, I'm off to bed. Night!