It's Christmas Eve and I just finished wrapping all the presents for the kids. [In case Lainey or Beau learned to read miraculously overnight, Santa asked me to wrap them for him as the elves ran out of time this year and he knew he could trust me.] I had ordered an artificial tree about a week ago thinking we would put it up next year. Since we're about to demolish half of our house in a couple of weeks, we decided against decorating the house too much. Or at all really. Our tree this year has been a little four foot thing I used in our old house to put in the window. The kids took every ornament off of it and played with them until it drove me crazy and I stuck all of them in the garage. They may have been shatterproof but they certainly weren't crazy proof. And, just a side note, Beau did manage to smash one. I swear these Houdini's could be testers of child proofing products but that's a whole other can of worms.
So the tree I ordered arrived today. I had told myself (but not my husband) that if the tree arrived before Christmas, we would put it up. So after a day of playing, going downtown to ride the carousel, and get one last glimpse of the big guy in the red suit, we arrived home at about 5pm. I then assembled my very first gingerbread house, was going to make cookies but realized the dough needed to be refrigerated for 2 hours. My apologies to Santa-there won't be any cookies waiting for him in this house tonight. Then, after I put Beau down for bedtime and Robert took Lainey up to bed, my sister and I tackled the tree. After a lot of fluffing, and I mean ALOT, the tree started to look like the Douglas Fir it claims to be. I'll wait to decide if I like it in the daylight tomorrow.
It's now almost midnight, my back hurts, and I can't stop looking at the tree. Lainey is getting the Evil Dr. Porkchop that she's been asking for and Beau will get his big, blue ball he wanted. Well, it's a ride on kind of ball that he'll need to grow into but he'll think it's a big blue ball. I know the kids are going to be more excited about the tree than the gifts. And that Lainey will open one gift, play with it for an hour or so, and then decide to open another. I don't understand that at all. I loved ripping into my presents like it was a race. Beau is just starting to get how you unwrap a gift but he loses interest fast.
I just can't wait to see their faces when they see their tree. They are the best gifts I've ever received and to see their smiles will light up my world. It's hard for me to remember what Christmas and life was like before these two angels came into my life. I know that my life and especially Christmas just gets better and better and it's all because of them.
“And the Grinch, with his Grinch-feet ice cold in the snow,
stood puzzling and puzzling, how could it be so? It came without ribbons.
It came without tags. It came without packages, boxes or bags.
And he puzzled and puzzled 'till his puzzler was sore.
Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn't before.
What if Christmas, he thought, doesn't come from a store.
What if Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more.”
-Dr. Suess
Merry Christmas!
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