Christmas Holidays

     The week before Christmas was hectic. (I'm so glad I had the foresight and motivation to get most of our Christmas shopping and wrapping done way ahead of time!) We were a bit stuck for the Friday - still needing some help with the girls/ running the household, but thankfully my lovely former roommate came up to help. When Josh got home from work we took her out for the Festive Special for dinner as a thank you. :)
   
     Saturday I was still pretty drained, but we had to run a few errands and grab a few last minute presents. My Type A personality would not allow Josh to do that himself, so we all trooped out together, which was a little stressful on the last weekend before Christmas. We don't really like crowds - they especially stress Josh out. Anyway, we got everything we needed and hid in the house for the remaining days before Christmas. I ideally would have liked to do a good clean before we left for the holidays because I hate coming home to a dirty house, but this year there was definitely no energy for that.

     We spent Christmas Eve morning with the neighbours having a delicious breakfast and exchanging gifts, then spent the next several hours packing up everything we needed for the rest of the week away. So. Much. Work.
We headed up to my mom's in the afternoon and had another delicious meal there for Christmas Eve dinner. My dad and grandma joined us as well, and Laura enjoyed playing with "Friend Grandma" who is 82, but just loves little ones. This may be one of her last Christmases, so it was nice to spend time with her. We had a short sing-along after dinner with my mom on the piano and dad playing harmonica for a few of Laura's favourite carols, and then tucked the girls into bed.

     Christmas morning my sister and her fiancee, and my dad and grandma all came back over just after 8:00am. The whole concept of Christmas/ Santa is still a little lost on Laura who had not even awoke by that point. When she did get up, she said, "Hey - where's Santa?" ... I guess she thought he was staying.

     We opened stockings first - highlights include Rachel receiving Smarties, which she immediately saw the obvious use: enjoying them in their rattling form.The girls also got cute matching hats/ scarves/ mitts knitted by my sister's fiancee.
    
     After stockings we went upstairs to open the 'big' presents. Laura's Santa gift was first: she got the movie 'Brave', and a plush Merida doll. She had been going on about that movie non-stop since we saw it in the theatre, and that was what she wanted from Santa.

     We then opened presents for several more hours. Laura was only marginally into it this year. We all received lots of nice things (too many, probably!), and the girls did well.
Another cute moment: my mom bought Rachel a little handmade wooden rocking chair, and upon opening, Laura obviously wanted to try it out. So Rachel got to sit on her lap and Laura started rocking and singing 'Baby Mine' to her, just like Mommy does in the big rocking chair. 

     After all the gifts were opened we had breakfast/ lunch (bacon and egg sandwiches - nom), and then we watched Brave with Grandma, who hadn't seen it yet. We headed over to the family cottage mid-afternoon to visit with my cousins and their kids who were all there. There were 18 of us for dinner all together. We used to spend Christmas morning with them when I was a kid, so it is really nice to be able to still get to see them at Christmastime.

     Boxing Day we packed all our things up and hit the road to Josh's parents' house. Rachel had not been sleeping/ napping well the previous couple days, so she ended up sleeping for most of the ride (thank God), and considering it took us five hours to get there, Laura did really well, too. When we were about half an hour from our destination, Laura said, "I'm full of driving." LOL I think we all were at that point.

     We spent the next couple of days there, and really enjoyed the company. We don't get to see Josh's siblings that often any more now that they are all off at school, so my favourite part of the holiday was hanging out and playing games with them. We opened gifts with them the next morning, and the girls were once again spoiled. Laura received a doctor kit from Josh's sister, which was a huge hit. She spent the majority of the day running around with the toy thermometer telling everyone they had a fever. Other favourites included a family set of anatomically correct plastic lions, and a huge bin of mega blocks.

cute matching sets from their Auntie

  
     We got a pretty significant dump of snow the night we arrived, so we also took the girls outside to play in the giant snow pile the plows made at the end of the street. Laura liked the idea in theory, but not as much in practice.
Josh's Grandma also made it over for a visit and really enjoyed meeting Rachel for the first time.

     All in all an enjoyable time. Until the drive home, that is. What is normally a 4 - 5 hour trip turned into a 7 hour nightmare, complete with passing 9 cars in the ditch and several on tow trucks, swerving around a near miss of an accident, etc. We really should have just stayed one more night, but we didn't realize how bad the roads were until we were too far away to justify going back. So we soldiered on. All I can say is, thank God for that headrest DVD player Laura got. We had spent far too much time in the car and decided to call it quits by the time we got back to my mom's to pick up the dogs and the rest of our gifts. We stayed the night there and headed home in the morning. A good decision for sure.

     We spent the rest of the day unpacking the car and putting away our masses of presents, vacuuming, washing the floor, washing bedding and remaking beds, sorting/ doing/ folding laundry, getting groceries, taking down the tree, etc. So basically we did the big clean I like to do before we leave after we got home this time. We didn't get everything done yet, but I still feel very accomplished.

     I am so glad that Josh has the entire week between Christmas and New Year's off. It still feels like weekend - and who doesn't love that?

     Now to tackle the rest of the never ending To Do List.

     Happy Holidays, everyone!