Christmas Recap

Ah the holidays. Spent a ton of time with my two darling boys (or three rather, including B) over the holidays, even though I didn't have much time off work. The boys really understood the whole meaning of Christmas this year - and by that I mean, they ripped the paper of each gift, exclaimed in excitement and then greedily clamored for the next gift. And when they had no more gifts to open, they ripped our gifts out of our hands to open for themselves. All in all, they loved the gift-opening this year and can recite quite a list of their most favorite presents. As was to be expected, their "most favorite of all" was a big box in which they have spent much time, including watching TV, driving their monster trucks and storing many, many toys:



We took the boys to church service on Christmas Eve, where we convinced them they were attending "church school for mommy and daddy up in the big classroom", this being the place we disappear to when we force them to endure Sunday school by themselves. It turned out not to have as much mystique as they had originally hoped and approximately five minutes into the service (designed for children, by the way), they both continually asked, "Is it over?" Somehow they were cajoled into staying and only had to be pacified with one bag of fruit snacks each.

We took them up for communion - this was a first for us at this church, so we weren't quite sure of how it worked. I had J - B had N - and we ended up in separate lines when we got to the front. The lady in front had a big loaf of bread from which she tore a piece to give to me and to J. J held it in his hand with undisguised disdain, being an superior connoisseur of all things bread and instinctively knew this one wasn't going to be up to his standards. I knew it was only seconds until he threw it to the floor so I hustled him to the next lady who was holding a goblet of grape juice into which we were to dunk our bread. I guided J's hand to dip his bread and then tried to get him to eat it - a big mistake as I could see from his face that a scream was fast ensuing, so I quickly swallowed it instead and whispered "Candy!" to get him to go back to our pew.

At that moment, I looked over and saw my dear husband fishing a completely juice-saturated piece of bread out of the goblet in his line and briefly wondered why he had gone to such extremes with the juice. Did he really love grape juice that much? I mean, hello, it's supposed to be a holy ritual. Turns out when N's turn to dunk his bread came up, N chucked the whole thing in the cup, forcing B to dig it out quickly, hoping no one noticed his whole-hand-ed immersion into the cup. He was then also forced to swallow the grape-juice-soaked-bread-chunk as only a devoted parent who is positive they will die from mortification on the spot can.



And that was our Christmas. We enjoyed time with our families but of course, never enough. The boys love their cousins and uncles and aunts and grandparents to the extreme and would love to simply move in with all of their letting-the-boys-do-whatever-thought-comes-into-their-heads loving selves. And we love them all too.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
(A little late but then again, you know me...)