Christmas

I promised you a picture of Flamingo Joe and his little chicks in their Christmas outfits and here they are:

They look a little pooped out because they are. I took this picture after the Christmas Eve service. These poor children are worn slap out from working themselves into a tizzy wanting Santa to come. They spent the last couple of days before Christmas helping me make cookies . . . and by "help" I mean exactly what you think I mean:

Two days before Christmas, I went into Casey's room and saw that they had made their own sleigh:

. . . complete with reindeer:

Casey also spent some time practicing his two songs we'd been working on to sing for YaYa and PopPop. Here's some of the actual performance if you're interested (vanity disclaimer - ignore the pianist, who had not yet had a shower in spite of the fact that this video was shot at 3:00 in the afternoon and also had no makeup on):

So cute. I'm not sure how Flamingo Joe could just lay back there with his eyes closed with all that cuteness going on right in front of him.

You'll recall, that both of our children received letters from Santa the week before Christmas and Santa told them that if they were not in bed and asleep he could not leave presents for them. So Casey, who had spied on Santa for three years in a row, suddenly saw the error of his ways and decided that he should at least pretend to be asleep this year when Santa came. Instead of spying on Santa this Christmas Eve, Casey decided he didn't want to risk getting busted and on December 23rd, came into our room right before bed and announced that he had a new plan for Christmas Eve. As you might imagine, this made our Christmas Eve much simpler.

So on Christmas Eve, while I was in Casey's room reading to him, we thought we heard a noise, so Casey turned out all the lights and told me to be quiet. Sure enough, pretty soon we heard reindeer hooves, jingle bells, and some disconcerting sliding and shuffling noises on the roof. Poor Santa had some trouble on our slick shingles -- we almost had to cash in that life insurance policy we carry on Santa. Mace had been asleep for an hour, so he missed all the excitement, but he decided he believed in Santa after all once he saw his brand new Spiderman bike waiting on him the next morning.

Note that it is indeed still dark outside -- I think we were up by 6:30 or so. I vaguely remember the seven Christmases back during the days before we had kids. We slept until 8:00 (Joe) or 9:00 (me), got up, had coffee and a bagel and then moseyed over to the tree by 10:00 or so to open the 2 or 3 presents under the tree. If I had know how having children would change Christmas, I would have had those pesky kids much much sooner. Christmas without kids is always a bit of a let-down, I think.

We had a great morning. By the time YaYa snapped the picture above, we had already progressed to the assembly stage of our morning, which extended well into the evening. Just kidding, it wasn't too bad this year, though I did get frustrated enough trying to get Gordon to work that I almost threw him through the wall.

Casey got a bat, glove and bucket of baseballs, so I spent some time trying not to get hit in the face while at the same time standing close enough for accurate pitches. I'm a terrible pitcher. But Mace is an excellent fetcher. YaYa is a good fetcher, too, for that matter.

I got a Kindle for Christmas, which explains why I haven't posted since Christmas Eve -- I've read about 6 books since Christmas Day. Flamingo Joe threatened to hide the Kindle a couple of days ago, but he's finding it hard to snatch it because it's usually attached to me somehow. But I'm learning to moderate my new addiction by only reading while I'm awake -- though last night I did fall asleep with my head on the Kindle and then dreamed I was still reading, so maybe I have some more work to do with my Kindle sponsor.

Oh well . . . new year, new challenges.

Happy New Year!!