I wasn't sure before she was born if I was going to feel up to hosting our traditional Christmas Eve dinner with my parents (and sister Mallory if she was home). However, since Ruby was kind enough to come a week early I was ready to do it.
I had finished my shopping the Wednesday before Christmas but had yet to wrap everything (I did get a lot done the night before I went into labor but I had several more to go).
On Christmas Eve I had John make his homemade spaghetti sauce and I threw together a salad and made the pasta and bread. John took the kids to the Children's Christmas Eve service at church (I stayed home with Ruby). Since my sister wasn't going to be coming home until the next day it was just my mom and dad who joined us for dinner. We actually used our dining room table and the fine china :)
After dinner and cleanup (thanks mom for helping with THAT!) we got the kids in their Christmas pj's and left out the milk and cookies for Santa and the carrot for the reindeer and then dragged the kids to bed.
Fortunately Ruby was sleeping a good stretch at that point and I was able to finish the wrapping in record time! She woke up at about 11pm to eat so I did that then got everything cleaned up and the gifts under the tree and got into bed about 12:30am.
Christmas morning came early (as does every other morning in the Bailey household). Lucy was ecstatic to see that Santa had left her the baby doll stroller that she had been wanting for months. Max was beyond thrilled when he got his Lego City Police Headquarters (all 953 pieces of microscopic size legos...THANKS SANTA!!!). Abby was just as excited with her new clothes as she was with her baby dolls (the girl LOVES clothes). As is tradition with the girls in this family, Ruby got a "Bobby" and a couple of little toys.
I surprised John this year with an iPod Nano, a Nike+ sport chip, and armband to use when he runs. His parents helped me complete this theme by giving him the Nike+ shoes as a gift. He puts the sport chip in the shoe and connects a receiver to the iPod while he runs then he can download all the info to the computer and can track his runs. I was so excited when I found out about this and knew it was the perfect gift for him (he usually just writes down his miles on a calendar). He was VERY excited about the gifts and will hopefully be able to make his inaugural run with everything tomorrow (it took us a while to actually load songs onto the iPod)...
After everything was opened and the top few layers of trash was cleaned up we had some breakfast, showered and dressed, and got ready to head over to my mom and dad's house...
Part 2...
Christmas at Nana & Papa's House...
1 comment:
Wow! Sounds like a great Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.
Buster was born on the 12th in 2007, so I remember how hard it was to do ANYTHING in those first couple weeks after his birth...and how tired I was. I'm impressed that you hosted dinner!
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