Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night...

It was a short night at our house.


I spent all of Christmas Eve in bed; I was so sick! I finally got up around 6:00pm. I was feeling good so I cleaned the house a bit, did some laundry, marinated the chickens and made preparations for Christmas day visitors. Then I had to shuffle the kids off to bed. Of course, my husband wanted to watch a movie with Connor after the girls went to bed, which meant Connor would be staying up late, which meant getting presents out would be delayed, which meant I was going to bed late. You wouldn't think it would matter what time I went to bed if I had already been in bed all day. But I did not get to sleep in bed all day. Chase hit a growth spurt on Wednesday and spent the entire day nursing.


One good thing about the evening was we got a great picture of the kids right before bed.


We forgot to hang stockings before the kids went to bed and we even forgot to leave a snack for Santa...I was not at peak performance this year. So after all the kids were in bed, I continued getting things prepared for Christmas day and finally headed to get a shower at 11:45pm. It was nearly one before I was snoring. At 3:30am Connor came runnig into our roomasking if he could have food. Like food was really what was on his mind. This, of course, woke Chase...which means feeding time (which takes at least an hour). I made Connor get in bed with us, hoping he did not see what Santa brought on the way to our room (it would have been hard as he practically had to step over his Santa presents to get to our door). He was very nonchalant about it all. He hopped in bed and never complained or hinted that he had seen anything.



After further questioning, we discovered Connor had in fact seen the gifts and had maybe even rifled through his stocking. But he was being so good about it all that we hated to be disappointed that we missed his surprised face as he discovered what Santa brought. After a brief mommy/daddy pow wow, we determined it was best to just go ahead and get up...mostly because my husband is BIG kid and gets more excited about Christmas than the kids do. Isabel was not even awake when she stumbled in

We jumped right into opeming gifts and ended up with Vader



A snow princess


And a regular princess...all she asked for was a crown that wasn't broken. Santa was happy to fill that order.


And this is our clothes-changer; Isabel changes her clothes constantly. I'm always washing clothes that have been tossed around the room and worn for only a couple of minutes. She must have changed clothes 4-5 times by 7:00am.

We then entertained the family. I spent the morning cleaning, cooking and preparing for the crowd. We had 21 people in our house today...can you say, "Chaos!" It's a surprisingly fun chaos that turns into sadness when people aren't getting along (it's rare but happens, expecially with the kiddos) and then I started getting really tired...only having 2.5 hours of sleep, having a baby nursing every hour and cooking and cleaning for 21 people a short 3 weeks after having a new baby...I sure hope I sleep like a baby tonight; the kid is getting a good sized bottle before bed!

I scored a sewing machine and an aerogarden! I've been wanting both and haven't splurged on either for myself. What an awesome Christmas! Hope your Christmas was just as wonderful :)