Best Christmas Ever!

Not really.  But it was good and fun and I liked it.

 

(What says Christmas better than a robot snowman?)

Lights at the Zoo

We have a zoo pass this year for the first time, so we enjoyed lights at the zoo.  It was crazy-packed because we went the night before Christmas Eve, but it was fun.  One of the best parts was walking through the light tunnel (the lights moved),

 and the trees that were timed with a Christmas song.  Pretty cool.  Then we went home and drank hot chocolate cause we were all ice cubes before the night was over.

Christmas Eve

We went to Khron's Conservatory with the kids.  Usually this is an anniversary activity for us, but our kids are getting bigger and they're more fun to take places now. 

 Fun enough, Santa was there.  The guy must have been a Santa at a local mall, cause he came prepared with candy canes and told the kids that he'd see them later that night.  Cute.

tangent about Santa Claus
Let's interject here that my boys are totally and completely sold on the idea of Santa Claus, which makes me uneasy.  Santa is fun and all, but it's a lie.  A grand, magical, fun lie, but still a lie.  I was trying to drop hints to them about how he's not real, but they didn't catch it.  "Isn't it UNBELIEVABLE that Santa travels around the world in one night?!"  Rob kicked me for that one.  ...  Elijah's teacher the Sunday after Christmas (not in my home ward) told the kids that she'd seen Santa Claus and the reindeer, and Elijah was so excited telling us about it, and I just glared at Rob and told him that I hated him and that he had BETTER take care of this.  ...  I don't mind us allowing the kids to believe in Santa.  It's hard for me from time to time, but they do love it, and Santa can be made into a good message.  But I object deeply to people making up stories and making huge productions about it.  If you have to feed the kids lies and make a production to keep them believing, isn't it time to just drop it?

To Rob's credit, he works with me.  He patiently explained to Elijah that his teacher didn't see Santa Claus, cause no one actually has.  Then explained to him that people actually HAVE seen Christ.  (And herein is my problem with Santa Claus.  Santa Claus = Christ.  Santa Claus = a lie.  Therefore Christ = ?)  ...  Whatever.  I'm not going to be able to do it for many more years.  My boys are just so trusting.  Rob says he'll tell Elijah when he's 9.  I might insist on 8. 
end of tangent

I suggested to the kids that we skip carrying presents out to the tree.  They didn't like that.  So we kept our traditions of The Christmas Story telling, new pajamas, and carrying the presents to the tree.

Christmas Day

We opened presents and played games and then, around noon, started packing up to go see Rob's family.  Our Christmas traveling rule includes not being stressed about travel.  And Rob got super stressed out, and I told him he was grounded  next year.  If someone asks if we're willing to travel on Christmas day, the answer is no.  If they ask why, we can say, "Because last year failed."  So there.

His brothers and sister sang a lovely Christmas song on Sunday morning, which off-set the fact that one of the missionaries in the ward gave the worst talk I've ever heard.  I almost went and told him so, but decided to be nice and only complain to Rob's family about it.

We spent the next 48 hours hanging out with his whole family:  lots and lots of kids and chaos.  It was brilliant!

Then we came home and finished up with what seemed like the second half of Christmas day.  We played with the new toys and watched our Christmas movie (Toy Story 3, which wasn't AMAZING like everyone told us it was (did anyone else notice that it was the same plot as Toy Story 2?), but it was good), and I went to bed at 9 because a migraine was threatening to ruin the next day.

I woke up 12 hours later without a migraine and we shipped our kids off so we could celebrate our 10 year anniversary.  We went to the temple in Columbus, ate lunch together, and shopped a little.  It was great.  The next day we watched Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (which was way better than I'd even hoped.  Loved it!) and just kinda hung out.  Around 3:00 we were starting our second movie when the preview for Tron: Legacy came on and I was reminded that I wanted to go see it.  So we spontaneously went and watched it in Imax 3D.  It was not worth the Imax 3D price, and the ending killed the movie for the both of us.  Fun movie, though, and the visuals were cool.  Then we went home and ate Raman and avacado sandwiches, cause we're awesomely romantic like that.

Last movie the next morning was The Sorcerer's Apprentice which was horrid.  Rob said, "It was fun!" and that's true.  But, seriously.  They poked fun at the whole Merlin magic thing until it felt like a mockery.  The lead male character's crisis wasn't sold well enough.  And the lead female character was beautiful and nice but stupid ("I don't understand science or any of that stuff, but I do love music!  And did I mention that I'm really pretty when I smile?  People love that.").  Gag me.  I asked Rob how he could stand watching such shallow, horrible characters, and he said, "I don't analyze my movies, Tamra.  It allows me to just enjoy them."  Oh. 

Basically, I was reminded, again, why I don't watch many movies.

We had the time to fight on our 48 hour date.  It hadn't occurred to me before that fighting is a luxury of time.  Normally there are too many things to do to bother with fighting.  :)  But we got in a good pointless fight, which was more fun than you'd think it would be.

We also reflected on our last 10 years of marriage and about what may or may not be coming in the next 10 years (like it's possible to know).  In 10 years Miciah will be 19 years old and in college (or whatever she wants to do)!  That's nuts.  Elijah and Tank will be in high school.  We'll be 41 and 39 years old.  We'll be completely out of debt.  Hopefully we'll have been able to take some nice family trips.  ...  We didn't dream about the roadblocks coming, but I know they're there.  Bring it on, life!  It's been worth it thus far, so I have a lot of hope for the years to come.

New Year's Eve
Then we picked up our kids, took down the Christmas tree (hurray!), and went to a party where we talked and had fun.  We were home with our kids by 10, and we stayed up until midnight and played games.  Well, everyone else played games and had fun, and I mostly slept on the couch.  After it was all over, Rob came to pick me up and carry me to bed, and I think I tried to kill him.  He left me there.

New Year's Day
The next day I could appreciate that it was fun to watch the kids enjoying our time up late on New Year's Eve.  Teancom loved banging the pots and pans.  Elijah was totally into the games we were playing.  And Miciah could stay up until 4 every morning if we let her.  It's nice that our family is getting older, and the kids are fully able to participate in fun things.  I LOVE that our kids are getting older. 

We had the missionaries over, as well as some friends, and we played games and talked and ate and enjoyed the new year's day.

End of Holidays
And that's that.  I'm glad the holidays are over and that we can now move about the cabin freely.  Every year I enjoy the craziness that is the holidays, and then I enjoy that they're over, too.  You know how people sing songs about making Christmas last all year?  That's my version of Hell.  I love Christmas, but I love when it's over, too.

Oh.  Sometime in there the sun came out, the temperatures rose, the snow melted, and the kids were able to play outside with friends!  It was a nice break from the ultra-cold temps we've had through most of December.  Also with the warm-up, our basement flooded a little.  We figured it was from the snow melt (even though that's never happened before), but discovered a few days later that the hose was on!  Ugh!  We think it'd been on for months but the temperatures were so cold outside that it kept the water frozen and therefore not running.  Problem solved now, but man, we felt like idiots.

(And please note that this was posted before February!  Hurray for me!)