Worst Christmas Ever????

I know it seems like an odd title for a post, but unless you were there you wouldn't believe it. No, there weren't any family feuds or accidents or forgotten gifts, Christmas 2008 was ruined solely one thing - the stomach virus!! But first, let me start back at the beginning. It was going to be such a great Christmas - there was a lot to celebrate. There were 3 babies born in the family this year, everyone was healthy, the seemingly endless remodel at my parents house was done (or at least close), and everyone was going to be together (all 18!). It all started with Elaina on December 20th. We all decided that it must have been something she ate and didn't think twice about it. Then Pete got sick on the 22nd and Claire on the 23rd. Still no cause for alarm. Fast forward to Christmas Eve. Mandy purchased matching pajamas for all 8 grand kids. Here are Andrew and Claire in front of the tree. We spent Christmas Eve with Danny's parents at our house and opened presents. Andrew tore through gifts and got a really cool art easel. Claire got a shopping cart and some fake food.

Then disaster struck in the middle of the night. I got sick and spent quite a lot of time on the bathroom floor. The next morning, we were due at my parent's house to open gifts at 8:30 am. I made it as far as our sofa at 8:00 am and we couldn't contain Andrew much longer, so we gathered up the presents and headed out the door. The picture below is how I spent Christmas Day - super fun!

When we arrived at my parent's house we discovered that 6 other family members had also been sick the night before. Needless to say, opening presents was not very exciting this year. Some people couldn't even make it through the whole thing without taking a "break". Others were sick Christmas night. Danny got sick on the 26th and Andrew got sick on the 29th. In total, 16 of the 18 people got sick. Ryan and Natalie are the only survivors. The good news was that it was a 24 hour bug. It came and took over your body for 24 hours, and then it was gone. We even gave the virus to unsuspecting visitors who stopped by. Christmas dinner was postponed until the 27th, and no matter what else happened, it couldn't ruin Christmas 2008. I'm sure we will all laugh about this some day.

Here is a picture of Claire with one of Andrew's presents.


Andrew with one of the many Star Wars toys.

Needless to say, there aren't many good pictures of Christmas this year. I'll post some more as soon as I get them from my dad's camera.

Christmas ornaments

My mom has a tradition dating back to when I was a child, where she puts our pictures on the Christmas tree. It is really cool to look at some of the old ones now. Sometimes they were a fancy creation attached to a Christmas ball, or just adhered to a glittered item we made. The past few years she has not been doing pictures of me and my siblings, thank goodness, but pictures of the grand kids. Now there are a lot of places that sell small frames that have ornament hooks on them. This afternoon I was cutting out pictures of the 8 grand kids and putting them in the frames for my mom. Andrew was quite distraught that he could not have a "Landon ornament". Landon is his cousin who moved to Boise almost 2 years ago. I had an extra picture of Landon, so I told Andrew that he could make his own ornament. I got out some construction paper, but he didn't want to use that, he wanted white paper. I helped him cut out a white square and he glued Landon's picture to the paper and I attached a ribbon on the back. He happily placed it on the tree and I started cleaning up. However, the Landon ornament was not enough. He wanted ornaments for all 8 grand kids, just like Grandma has. So we proceeded to make the other 7 ornaments. After a while he only wanted to hang the ornaments, so Danny and I did assembly. Below is a picture of the finished product. It actually turned out cute.

Train wars

After a long absence the Geotrax set is now a hot commodity in our house. The track is constantly being changed and updated depending on who is over and what 'disasters' may have come upon the track - more on that later. There are many trains and controllers. Of course, Claire always wants the one that Andrew has. He likes to add cars to his train as well as freight and drop them off at various places along the track.

The current configuration. This was started about 2 weeks ago and has slowly grown.

Here is Claire trying to be nice to Andrew so that he will give her the controller. She acts like she just wants to watch, but in reality she wants to control.

I know this picture is blurry, but this shows the problem we have been dealing with. Claire likes to sit on the track, or pull the tracks apart, or worse yet - take the trains off the track. There are only certain trains that Andrew will let her control. Never the newest train - Arrow. If Andrew is in another room and he hears the train go on, because of course they have sounds, he runs in the room to make sure that Arrow is not being used and that Claire didn't mis-handle some freight.

Christmas card pictures

We went to our Christmas party at church last night. It was really fun and the highlight of the event was that Andrew got to sit on Santa's lap. He told him that he wanted Star Wars toys. They gave the kids chocolate advent calendars and Andrew told Santa that he already had one. Nice! I told him that we could give it to Daddy. We did not even attempt to put Claire on his lap. She freaks out when anyone new even looks at her. Maybe next year...

So today after church I decided that we should try to take the picture for our Christmas card. Taking pictures of the kids has been challenging lately, so I talked to Andrew about sitting still and smiling, but it turned out that Claire needed the pep talk. All we needed was one good picture, but Claire was not interested in sitting, standing, or holding still. All of a sudden everything around her was REALLY interesting. From the sliding glass door, the ornaments, the couch, a blanket, to her feet she was looking everywhere but the camera. Not to mention the fact that now both Andrew and Claire feel the need to see every picture on the back of the camera as soon as it is shot. Here are some outtakes from that super fun experience:

You will have to wait to see the final picture when your card arrives in the mail. Hopefully that will be before Christmas, but no guarantees. Just remember that when you see the picture, I did not have the most cooperative subjects.