Highlights of the past couple of weeks: taking the kids ice skating at Seattle Center, late night swimming with Harry & Camille, reading The Night Before Christmas to the kids on Christmas Eve, sleeping in one morning until 9:15 (not Christmas morning). We spent 2 days in Bellingham with Rody and Alice this week. We watched the Polar Express one night, and they took the kids to see the new Muppet Movie while Chris and I got some time to take a long walk together. Chris helped Rody with his website, and walked them through how to use their new Kindle. The kids came down the first morning and were showered with even MORE gifts. Then, the second morning Harry was wondering where the gifts and stockings were. I guess he thought he was going to get that treatment every day in Bellingham.
Some people were interested in what we were going to eat on Christmas eve and Christmas day, since it was only the 5 of us. Well, Christmas eve we went to the 5 pm Children’s service, and then decided to come back to hear the music at the 7 o’clock service. So, we made something quick for the kids, and had smoked salmon with cream cheese on garlic bread in between services. Christmas night we had scallops. Some might feel bad for us that we didn’t have a traditional Christmas meal, with a ham, etc., but I’d say we did all right.
Christmas day was very relaxed with just the 5 of us. We went in and looked at the stuff from Santa, which was pretty modest, then had a little breakfast, then went back in to open the gifts, one at a time. This way we could all see what everyone got. We had a good number of gifts to open, but we were still done in time to get to church at 10 am. The kids were very excited because Pastor Brad invited everyone to “come as you are”, in pajamas! My kids woud live in the pjs if they could. In fact, most of the Christmas vacation has been spent this way. There a few days in there where they never changed because at bedtime they were still wearing their pjs from the night before. Elyse’s big gift was a swivel desk chair (that is so comfortable I want to use myself), Camille got all ski accessories and a pair of fancy earrings, and Harry’s favorite gift sadly were some Nerf guns from Santa. Bad call, Santa. Those guns drive me nuts.
Christmas Eve at our church
While in Bellingham, Chris and I made big plans to spend new years day in the kitchen together. We thought we’d make lots of food and freeze it so we would have lots of things to pull out for dinner on busy week days. Unfortunately, we didn’t get any of the groceries we need to do that, and we realized tomorrow might be kind of busy with his soccer, and church, and all of the grocery stores will be closed. Plus, we don’t tend to get along too well in the kitchen together, frankly. Our other big plan was to prepare a traditional holidal meal for new years day: turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, green beans, etc. But we don’t have any of that stuff either. Oops.
"BEFORE"
"AFTER"
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