A Christmas Story.

We hoped and hoped, but by Christmas Eve we had given up on a white Christmas, so after pizza with Nana and Pappi we settled the kiddos into their new jammies and a movie: Kung Fu Panda 2. Alla asked me just about every five minutes to check and see where Santa was (we were tracking him all day with the NORAD app - ah, technology today!). You gotta love Christmas Eve, when the kiddos will basically go to bed whenever you tell them Santa is approaching. Christmas Day we were fully prepared for a six a.m. wake-up, but lo and behold, my own eyes popped open at seven and wondered when I'd hear the pittter patter of little feet! I started to wonder if Nana and Pappi would arrive, bleary-eyed, before the kids even awoke, when, at 7:30 they came bounding out, Fisher looking like he could have really used an extra hour, thankyouverymuchbigsister.

To say the morning was chaotic is putting it very very lightly. I had big plans for coffee to be ready and scones warm from the oven awaiting my mom and Bob but alas and alack that was a bit delayed by such goodness as a fairy all the way from Ireland! You'd have thought she was really flying the way Alla held her prized fairy. We also had the joy of seeing the delight on Fisher's face at Santa bringing him a new Dusty-Vacuum Vic (although he now tells us he didn't want a new Dusty-Vacuum Vic, just a new Vacuum Vic, and I have to remind him just to be grateful because surely Santa did his best seeing as how there isn't likely an entire wing at the North Pole Toy Factory dedicated to making sewer trucks for little boys to play with). At some point I instituted a mandatory break time so that we could all put some food in our mouths (by that point, the scones were fresh from the oven and delicious) and suck down some coffee. Truth be told, when I took this one of the kids, the wrapping paper picture tradition that goes back to my own childhood, the adults had yet to open a single present. But if you know anything at all about me, it's that I like to delay present-opening myself, because once they're open, that's it, no more 'til next year. So waiting until after scones and coffee and then casserole and putting kids' toys together and cleaning up boxes and paper and packaging - that was just my style.