Merry Christmas

It's Christmas morning, and I'm awake ridiculously early. Unlike past years of my life, its not because I'm too excited to sleep. No, its because I'm stressed that the weather is going to prevent me from seeing my parents today. FIGURES the first time I plan a Christmas at my house, in my entire life, we are expecting an ice storm. After 5 days of dry weather, it has to be an ice storm today?? Really?? Of course, today hasn't even begun yet, and its not supposed to start until noon, so I am really, really, really hoping it all works out. For some reason I feel like its going to be hard for my parents anyhow that they aren't having Christmas at their own house, and the fact that Kellie has been in PA for 2 days and they haven't seen her yet. Its just really going to suck all around.

However, I am hoping it works out. The Christmas holiday so far has been really nice. Aside from many pre-Christmas activities for G3, such as school parties, Christmas playdates, and seeing Santa, I've tried to make the last month as festive as possible. We've baked cookies, decorated a tree, wrapped presents, shopped. We've listened to Christmas music, watching Christmas movies, and stayed up late. I've had lights on and candles burning almost every day. Its all leading up to this one day, but sometimes I think I like the anticipation and the traditions of preparing even more than the big morning.

On Wednesday evening Kellie and Shawn arrived around 9pm from North Carolina. This was a much heralded event in our house, and if you asked G3 in the previous days "Who's coming to our house?" he was just as likely to say "CeeCee! And SHAWN..." as he was "Santa." He was so cute when they got there, showing off like a typical male by running around shouting at the top of his lungs and performing acrobatics.

Reunited!

Gabe had to work for a bit on Christmas Eve, so CeeCee, Shawn, G3 and I did some last minute Christmas shopping and then hanging out. Gabe's sister MaryBeth and her husband Bryan came over in the afternoon to exchange presents and visit G3. We had a really nice time and MB retained her status as best-gift-giver-ever: I have seriously never received a gift from her that I wasn't wowed by. For me...a very cool 2000 piece puzzle (yeah!!) and one of those roll-out mats to do it on. For the Gabe's: custom made Eagles jerseys with their names on the back, and the numbers "2" and "3" (for G2 and G3) respectively. GREAT GIFTS MB!!!!

G2 and G3

Gabey with Aunt MB and Uncle Bryan

The late afternoon of Christmas Eve was very pretty, and the light was beautiful (see first photo) so we did an impromptu photo shoot with Kellie and Shawn. Neither one was initially very willing, but after some romping in the snow they had a lot of fun and we got some great pictures. The evening festivities included a great meal by Gabe of seafood salad and perogies. We let G3 open 1 stocking gift before carting him off to bed, with visions of sugarplums (or more likely, "Cars" characters) dancing in his head. We then put all the gifts (the majority for G3 of course) under the tree and Shawn commented that, in this Christmas of firsts (this is his first Christmas away from his family) this was something fun that none of us had ever done before.

And now here we are, Christmas morning. Everyone is still asleep except for my dog and me, and I'm hoping G3 stays that way until at least 8, and that we can keep him upstairs til 9. There is ham and turducken (yes, turducken!) to go in the oven, and the hope that there will be enough people to eat all the food we have.

Merry Christmas!