An amazing Christmas

I can't believe it - the Christmas holiday has finally ended. I'm happy to say: we did it! With all of the traveling and visiting this year with three kids so young, it was exhausting.

We've barely been home the past week. We've been home so little that I haven't had time to keep up with my home (it's after midnight the day after Christmas and I'm taking a little break after doing some mad cleaning all evening!). Kaitlyn has started getting very overstimulated with her lack of hometime, and even one of our dogs, Chevy, has been so lonely he's been cuddling with us under the covers at night (usually he sleeps at our feet) and being quite insistant about it. He misses his people! And here I thought he'd appreciate the break from all of the kids!

Christmas morning we woke the kids up at about 7am because we had to be to one of my aunts around 11am. We needed time to open gifts. Once I had the little tree on and got dressed, we told the kids Santa had come. My son (the two year old) shot out of bed like a rocket, rolled across his sister who was in her nest on the floor next to my bed, grabbed her hair, raised her head (to wake her up), groaned at her (still nonverbal), put her head back down and ran out to see what Santa had brought. Once he saw all of the presents, he ran back into the room and pounced on his sister to wake her so they could open presents. Bret and I were laughing hysterically. We sang happy birthday to Jesus and explained why we get to have gifts on Christmas, then gave the gifts to everyone.

The homemade gifts were a hit, but thanks to my sister in law who played santa, the kids got a lot of clothing and educational toys. Because of my husband being out of work so long and struggling with his bipolar disorder, the kids weren't going to have a Christmas with anything storebought from us. My sister in law offered to take care of Christmas, so the kids would be taken care of with items they were in need of, and I think she went a bit overboard. halfway through opening presents Christmas morning, the kids stopped opening - they were sick of it! I thought I'd never see that.

The holidays seemed to depress Bret a lot. He really didn't want to attend the Christmas Eve (Wigilia) party we always went to for my dads side of the family but he did come. Then he wasn't really up for the festivities on Christmas day but again forced himself to pretend to be in the spirit at least. We spent several hours today removing toys from all of the ties, plastic and cardboard, de-tagging and de-stickering clothing, washing/drying/folding clothing and finally finding a place to put everything. Then I spent a few hours cleaning after the kids went to bed, while Bret cleaned the carpets. Now I am going to get the clothes laid out for tomorrow, pack the diaper bag for a morning trip out to Sams Club, then get to bed myself. I'm tired!

The kids were blessed with many items they adore. My daughter got lots of pink clothes (and a lot with butterflies!), dress up clothing, jewelry, a kids digital camera and learning laptop. My son got his fill of trucks and cars, got some airplanes and helicopters to play with and other educational toys. My mom went shopping for them at Ikea and got them some pretty neat stuff, and got me a KitchenAid (doing a happy dance - it's able to hold enough dough for 6 loaves of bread at a time!).

Andrew went all through Wigilia without an accident in his pants - my aunt had been joking about how much time I spent in the bathroom (two kids who were drinkin a lot of water, had to use the bathroom a lot! Andrew needs help, and Alexis likes to explore new bathrooms, so I needed to be with them when they were in there). Christmas day however, Andrew had a lot of accidents. I just think the stress had added up to be too much for him and he had SOOO many new things to play with, I think he just forgot to use the potty. No problem! We'll see how tomorrow goes.

Tomorrow I have to make a run up to Sams club but other than that, I think it'll be a quiet day at home!