What happened to Christmas vacation?

Christmas this year was wonderful!  Harry is just the perfect age for all the preparations and for that excitement and magic that comes with waiting for Santa to arrive.  He helped with putting up the tree, he decorated cookies to the last cookie and he (sometimes grudgingly at first) read Christmas stories with me and he even understands that Christmas is Jesus' birthday not just when Santa comes.  He of course was despite that very excited for the arrival of a certain elf in red.  He even participated willingly in the pageant and was a very fine shepherd #3.  

On Christmas Eve, Harry came down about 8:15 and asked if it was time to turn out lights yet (usually we have to remind him and if we don't find him still awake reading much later than he should be).  We told him he had 15 minutes but he could turn them out if he wanted.  He just wanted to get to sleep so Santa could come!  He also was very upset that we set a wake up time, 7:00 and yet, when 7:00 rolled around the next morning, Mom and Dad were ready and Harry was still upstairs!  He is such a good boy - he was following to the letter and his clock still read 6:59.  Harry powered through his gifts and Robert was a bit overwhelmed.  We tried to slow him down a bit, but to no avail and really he didn't care that he was done far before the rest of us.  Robert actually opened his last gift in the evening, he was rather overwhelmed by it all.

It was a very fun Christmas Day and so nice to have Grampy and Auntie Jessie there too!

Christmas vacation is one I seldom am prepared for and which always goes by quicker than I expect.  This year it was a week and a day.  Today is the last day of vacation.  It is a church day, but an unusual one for me - I am not teaching, reading or preaching.  Since there isn't any Sunday School, Harry will be in the pew with me and hopefully Robert will be in the nursery.  He is currently in a difficult time for sitting in church, he usually wants to go visit with Kevin on the altar and he patiently waits until I am not paying attention to make a break for it.  On Christmas Eve, he got all the way up to the altar during announcements (I turned away for about 10 seconds) and when I came up to the front side of the church, he looked at me, said, "No Mommy, I want to be with Daddy" and then turned and was headed for the creche to play with the porcelain Jesus figure.  That's when I had to walk up on the altar and retrieve him and bring him back to the seat.  Then later at the altar Kevin did a double take when he looked at our 2 year old and the reason was, he had purple crayon all over his face!  He looked like he'd gone a round with Harry, but we soon remedied the situation with a visit to the bathroom.  That was funny - so much for my powers of observation - I watched him playing with the crayons near his face, but didn't notice his face getting covered in crayon.

Here is our Christmas tree.  It will stay up until Epiphany.  We've had it up since mid December.  We have gone and cut down a tree at a local farm for about 3 years now.  It is fun and this year it was lovely and warm on the day we cut down the tree, which meant that we could walk around in a leisurely way and choose a tree.  This year our tree looks a little different - fewer ornaments (go figure huh?), no garland, new lights and new star thanks to the Christmas tree shops.  Oh and we borrowed the tree skirt from Dad.  When we had the 12+ inches of water in the basement we lost all kinds of stuff and chief among it was Christmas stuff.  When I opened a box this December, it reeked of mold, so there went a few more things (a creche, some linens, some ornaments).  It is just things, but a bit sobering.

This is how I welcomed in the new year.  I think I finally succumbed to a stomach bug on New Year's Eve.  I don't know really if it was that or a migraine, but I was pretty much on the couch or in bed that day.  I was asleep by 8:30 long before Harry.  It was a 24 hour kind of thing at least and yesterday we all got out on another unseasonably warm day and took our first walk of the new year - the boys rode their scooters and we walked down to the water and wished it a Happy New Year.