Christmas

We had an amazing blessed Christmas. The kids were full of wonder and joy. Here is a play by play.

Christmas Eve day - My parents and sister arrived along with a dusting of snow. The sky was a steely gray and all of a sudden it felt like the dead of winter. Thanks to Jeff's dad we had a roaring fire with some lovely wood that he had brought us a week ago. Jac and Mia were wonderfully entertained by Aunt Daphne and Papa and Gee Gee. They played chase games and generally showed off for an hour or so. We had our traditional Christmas Eve fare for dinner, which are appetizers. I made meatballs and seared tuna and we had a veggie tray and a meat and cheese plate. Followed up by some Christmas cookies and chocolate, everyone was well fed.

Christmas morning - It took awhile to get the kids to bed, of course. I remember it being impossible to fall asleep on Christmas Eve as a kid. Amazingly enough, we all slept in on Christmas until 8:00 am, which is absolutely unheard of. It was lovely and eventually I had to whisper in Jac's ear, "do you think Santa came last night"? That roused him, he was going to go straight downstairs but I told him to wake up Mia.

The two of them carefully walked downstairs, unsure of themselves. They came into the "cars" room (we call our front living room the cars room) and saw all of the presents. They were a bit overwhelmed. They got over that pretty quickly and wanted to dig into gifts. We all got into it and it went pretty quickly. There wasn't a huge amount of coaxing in order to get them to open their presents. They got hung up on a couple that they wanted to check out, I believe Jeff had to read one of the new books to Mia before she would move on. All in all, it was a wonderful morning.

Jeff and I went to noon mass and it was wonderful. We were able to find a seat easily and the contemporary band made the music beautiful. The snow was falling pretty fast while we were out but not enough to accumulate. For Christmas dinner, we had ham and cheesecake for dessert our Carey family tradition.

All in all we had a fantastic time with our family and a wonderful Christmas. We are so blessed to be able to provide what we do for our family and it is overwhelming at times to realize that many are not this blessed.

Over the weekend we were able to spend a couple of days with Jeff's family also. We had some very interesting conversations that I will be thinking about for awhile. We exchanged gifts and ate well. Jac and Mia love playing with their cousins and try and keep up with all the older kids. I do hope that your Christmas was wonderful as well.

Update - We got our electric fence fixed yesterday for a very reasonable amount. Our collar works and I got a quick lesson on how to train for the fence. Jeff talked to the manager at the rescue group and he asked if we would be interested in taking Casey for the weekend, as her foster family is out of town for the weekend and she will be boarding at the rescue. We of course are very interested and so will probably have a furry guest for the weekend! She does have to go back to the rescue next week to finish her heartworm treatment and we will still need to have a home visit. But all in all things are falling into place very quickly. They would like to see Casey with us as she is a good fit for our family. I have a feeling that after the weekend we will all be madly in love with Casey.