These Are The Days of Miracle and Wonder. . .: Christmas 2011

We had a fabulous Christmas that didn't go as planned but turned out great in the end. Santa and I were really on top of things this year and had the shopping done (so we thought) by the first week of December. Then Santa's elves fell apart. The dune racer for the little girls was on back order and wasn't going to arrive until the middle of January and the go kart for the big kids (Jason, Nicole, Brock and Mikele) was never shipped. So Santa reordered another go kart from someplace else, bought a back up power wheels and crossed his fingers. In the end the go kart made it the Monday before Christmas, the Dune Racer arrived the Friday before Christmas (the back up was returned) and all was well. . . until Christmas eve. Allie had thrown up on Friday morning but she had been congested so I didn't think anything of it. Kassie threw up Friday night once and was tired on Saturday but didn't want to miss out on the planned activities so we went forward as planned. After a fabulous day of playing games, eating dinner opening a present and reading a story we sent the kids off to bed. One more side note - Christmas fell on a Sunday and we have 9:00 church. We had discussed our plans for Christmas morning. I wanted to be up and open presents before church. Everyone else I spoke to said that they were going to make their kids wait until after church. (cruel and unusual punishment in my opinion!) I asked the kids what they wanted to do and they said they wanted to open their Santa gift before church but wait until after church so they didn't have to leave their new toys after they opened them. (whose children are these?) Here are a few pictures from Christmas eve.

We traditionally open a present Christmas eve. We use to open pj's but the kids found that anticlimactic (boring). So then we started opening a game on Christmas eve to play as a family. This year I found this game called Left, Right, Center. It is easy, fast and fun. It comes in a small tube so to make the opening of the game a little more fun I had Jason put it in a box and wrap the present multiple times. Then we took turns tearing off wrapping paper with Jason's big work gloves on while the res of us sang "We wish you a merry Christmas, we wish you a merry Christmas, we wish you a merry Christmas and a happy new year!" Allie was the first one to try and when we put the gloves on her and told her what to do she gave us this look like you idiots and said "I can't with these." So we didn't make her wear the gloves.

Success!

Santa finished assembling gifts and we were set and ready for bed by about 1:30. At 3:00 Mikele came up and woke me up crying that there was throw up in her hair. YUCK! So Jason cleaned carpet while I cleaned up Mikele. When Mikele walked downstairs (passing the tree) she said. Oh it doesn't look like Santa has come yet. WHAT??? Obviously she was not completely awake.
Brock woke up a little after 7:00. He was SOO excited and came and woke me up. I told him to go wake up Kassie and Allie. (I wanted Mikele to sleep as long as possible but didn't want her to miss out). Brock came back to inform me that Allie had thrown up all over her bed. So with 1/3 of the family puking in the last 5 hours we decided that instead of sharing our fun we would stay home from church.
Santa delivered Kassie and Allie's dune racer and had it under the tree with a note.

Brock reading the note: basically it said that Santa had not forgot the big kids but that it was too big to get down the chimney and under the tree so it was in the garage. Santa had to bring 3 extra elves to get it unloaded and the reindeer were relieved to have the weight off the sleigh.