the madness descends (an epic post)

As the child of divorced parents, I spent most of my teen and early adult years celebrating two Christmases: my mom would do Christmas Eve and we'd have Christmas day with my dad. Things got hecka more complicated when the Dearest and I got married- I remember one year we were at my Mom's on C.Eve till midnight, then up at 9am to go to my Dad's, then we hit the In-Law's house at 2pm. It was all a bit much.

Once we had kids, we tried scaling things back. We still did C. Eve at my mom's and at least one Christmas Day celebration with family. One year we did my Dad's house, the next year we went to the In-Laws'. But as Little Man got older (and we added Monkey Boy to the mix), it got harder and harder for us to make it out of the house on Christmas Day. The kids really didn't want to leave their new toys behind to be dragged to someone else's house for a turkey dinner.

So we decided that we'd still to Christmas Eve with my mom and we'd spend Christmas Day at our home, making our own traditions as a family. The Dearest's parents are very understanding of this and don't expect us to make it on Christmas Day (tho we will be attending a huge family gathering later this week involving all the out-laws....probably 30-40 people).

My Dad, on the other hand, is another matter. His health is getting progressively worse and he hasn't had a driver's license in at least 5 yrs. We always make the effort to include him in our Christmas Day, but he often pulls his passive-aggressive act and refuses to play along. Some years we can talk him into attending and some years he begs off. When he does attend, it involves the Dearest going to pick him up & drop him off....a trip of nearly an hour each way. Bless the Dearest- he never complains about my crazy relatives!

All of this is a long-winded explanation of why I have so many photos to share. So here goes:

Christmas Eve:
We had a visit from "Santa" (aka our neighbor Frank). All of the neighborhood kids were gathered at one home and Santa rang the doorbell....

yummy cupcakes and Christmas decor


little man enjoys a cupcake


monkey boy meets Santa (photo courtesy of Jen)

Then it was off to Grandma P's house for a traditional turkey dinner and much gifting:

"it was a hit and we didn't even take it out of the box"


monkey boy's favorite gift

Back home for a late night....boys wanted to play with their new toys! So they were up till 10:30pm. Monkey Boy did NOT want to go to bed without his train & ended up falling asleep with the train in his arms.

Christmas morning was filled with fun surprises, including seeing Santa's footprints in front of the fireplace. Little Man said we should be very careful that we didn't get any of the magic powder on our feet because it would make us fly like Santa's reindeer.

And this:

was very quickly reduced to a pile of torn paper and empty boxes. (more Christmas photos here) Monkey Boy's favorite gift involves his trainset:

While Little Man is really enjoying his new Leapster games:

The small men were quite spoiled but loved every minute of it and so did I! Christmas is ever so much more fun with little ones.

ETA: I will be posting a FO report on Monkey Boy's sweater tomorrow (or maybe tonight if I get to it).