Christmas Eve with my family was wonderful as always. We spent the day preparing for the party and eating...a lot...in very frequent intervals. But since we all tend to get grumpy when we get hungry, I like to think of it as a necessity rather than gluttonous. We were very smart this year, and had the entire family dressed for 5:15 mass by 4pm. This way, we were able to get all of the family photos done before the children got too tired, and before the craze of the party began. Mass was wonderful as always. We go to the Children's Mass now so that the kids can enjoy the live nativity and singing, and they even have ballet dancers now. It's quite a show.
By the time we got home we had only a few minutes to spare before the party began. And what a party it was!! We estimate that we had about 60 of our closest friends and family attend - some who haven't made it in years! It was an amazing celebration made even more fun by the fact that we had about 13 young children who were completely enchanted by our visit from Santa. While I always feel like I don't actually get to talk to anyone on Christmas Eve, I did have a chance to have a few WONDERFUL conversations this year, and I now have it on pretty good authority that 2010 is going to be a spectacular year...more on that to come later. Much to our dismay, the children did not go to bed well before the party ended, but rather were the last ones we saw off at the end of the night! Ahren brought Zach and Lexi home at 11:30, while I stayed behind to clean up and ensure that Christmas Magic would be alive and well in the morning.
After going to bed around 1am, Christmas morning came all too early with the 6:25 wake up call from the cousins alerting us to the fact that Santa had come and was not at all stingy with the gifts! It took us awhile to rile the Lippman troops, but we were able to get their engines going once they saw all the presents that had been left for them! The next few hours were a flurry of wrapping paper, and new toys and squeals from happy children. Lexi was thrilled to get her Ariel doll "with all the dresses and tail" that she had been asking for for months (Santa is such a good guy) and Zach thought it was pretty fantastic they we gave him a whole sock full of toys that he was allowed to pull out. Of course, he was far more interested in tissue paper than any of the presents he received, but that's pretty typical for my kids.
After some breakfast, showers and naps for the kids (or just a short rest in Lexi's case), we were on to round three. As always, Mama made a wonderful feast for us, and Great Gram, Uncle Jay, and Uncle Jack and Aunt DJ joined us for the continued celebration. It was a lively and fun filled dinner and dessert, and by the time we got to our third round of presents we had a hard time keeping some folks awake (the kids, of course, were still going strong)! After another wonderful afternoon, we cleaned up, packed up and took our very sleepy children home to bed. Both Lexi and Zach were asleep before their heads even hit their pillows.
This morning at 8am, Lexi tip toed into my room, came to the side of my bed and said, "Mama, I just have to ask you one quick question and then I'm going back to snuggle in my bed." "Okay," I said, "what is your question?" She replied, "Do giants live in this area of the world?" "No...giants don't live anywhere in the world" I said. "Okay" she replied, and went back into her room, climbed back into bed, and went to sleep. :)
Lexi will be enjoying her cousins' extended visit for the rest of the weekend, and then the best gift of all is that Ahren took next week off from work. So we are thrilled to be getting some time together as a family when we can relax and enjoy all of our new toys.
Merry Christmas, everyone! And Happy New Year! I hope you all had as wonderful a Christmas celebration as we did.
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