Kiss-Mas*

It came and it left.  In between we had over-stimulated children, chaos, a trip to the Georgia Aquarium, someone who forgot to let the London Broil defrost so she had to improvise and make bacon and eggs for Christmas dinner (this forgetful person shall remain nameless), and sleeping children (with soon to be sleeping mommy and daddy). 

It was our first Christmas alone (as in we had no other family around us) and there was something really nice about it (we did miss our family... don't get your panties in a wad).  Mostly the nice part was that we only had to coordinate 4 people... granted, 2 of those people are rambunctious children, but they were oddly behaved (I think it was a combination of colds, exhaustion, and constant sugar highs and lows).  And now it has gone.  But I wanted to share some of the moments with you.

Let's start with our tree... this is what it looked like the night before once Santa had visited:

And... this is a tree that only has presents for Chloe and Evan.  A little obscene for a 2 year old and 7 month old.  And even worse - I honestly thought I had gone light this year (I blame it on the Aunts, Uncles, and grandparents who sent gifts, not Mom and Dad).  And even worse than that - Brian's parents are coming to visit this weekend so their gifts aren't even under the tree.

So, here I have this beautiful Christmas tree all ready for the children to come down and be awed by its bounty of presents.  And I decide to try and make a moment of it.  This morning (Christmas morning) once Evan woke up, I woke up Brian and then Chloe.  Then I had Brian carry Evan and Chloe downstairs so I could videotape how animated the children will be once they see the presents... this is what I got:



While Evan was interested, it just wasn't the excitement I was looking for.  And Chloe just didn't seem impressed.

Even though her pile started out like this:



And ended up as this:

I'm thinking that to actually impress her we need to get her a pony... and while her father would gladly do that, Mommy is the voice of financial reason in these situations.

But here is the real meaning of Christmas... the materialistic overload of things and trash:

No, seriously, here is a more "real" meaning of Christmas... last week Evan and I made wrapping paper.  I cut up old paper grocery bags and let him paint on them (finger and brush).  I used one of his creations to wrap a gift he picked out for his Daddy:

I hope you all had a Merry and pleasantly exhausting Christmas!

*The letter "R" is still difficult for Evan to pronounce so this is how he pronounces "Christmas."