Christmas Eve

Hi, It's Christmas morning. But this is what happened last night... The kids all slept by the tree in the front room. It's a kid tradition that they started 10 or so years ago. They all look forward to their sibling sleepover ~ staying up late and chatting with excitement for what the morning will bring.

So last night Corey and I didn't bother making the kids go to bed. They were still up and wired with energy, but I was putting Daniel to bed, so I got Owen and put him to bed too, and that meant I was done and could retire. It was just 10:30. Corey soon came in, we decided to set our alarm for 2 am to put stuff out. When the 2 am alarm sounded I got out of bed. The house was quiet. That's good, that means hopefully kids are snoozing, and they should be at 2 am. Corey said he'd be out in a few. He had bought presents and wrapped them and wrapped the ones I had bought too, so I wasn't totally sure what gifts were what or what the plan was for the morning. We don't really have time to talk or coordinate things lately. I snooped around in his office and found the candy he bought for stocking stuffers and slowly took care of those. I ate the mangoes and drank the eggnog the kids left out for Santa, and munched the carrots for his reindeer, wishing Corey was awake to drink the eggnog so I wouldn't have to.

It's against weight loss rules to consume calories in the wee hours of the morning, right? But I had to get rid of them, but I don't like to waste... I thought snooping in the kitchen to try to find their plastic packaging would be too noisy. So I munched those out of duty, drank a little egg nog and brought the rest upstairs and put in a cup in our bathroom for Corey, then returned the glass empty downstairs to show that Santa drank it. Then I continued to wander around trying to figure out what to do. Eventually I just put out everything. Stockings and presents under the tree all ready.

I went to bed at 3:45 and Corey told me he got up at 4 for a few minutes to make sure the gifts were out, and then he went to bed. I snuggled back in with my baby.

I guess we're as ready as we're gonna be. This Christmas wasn't as well planned as others have been. We're still trying to figure out how to juggle this many kids and all their schedules. Plus with Corey being gone for 2 weeks that made it a little harder. Thus we plan to pre-empt the unwrapping in the morning with statement to decrease expectations, disclosing again that their parents have been stretched thin lately!