It's Christmas Eve...

Ryan and I are supposed to take turns sleeping in this long holiday weekend. Not sure why I'm feeling so generous with letting him sleep... he sleeps in for a bit pretty much every weekend. I'm more often than not the one up with the kids (awake by 6:30) out of bed at 7. Then, by either the kids coming in to bug him enough or by him sensing I'm getting more and more frustrated with the seventh morning in a row of having the kids by myself... he usually rolls out of bed by about 8:30 or so. But here's where we differ; 8:30 IS my idea of sleeping in... heck, I'm happy if I can sleep till 7:30. But Ryan's idea of sleeping in is not getting up till noon. And that does not usually fit in with my idea of how I want to be spending my weekend... alone with the kids like every other day of the week.
So today is supposed to be his day to "sleep in" by his terms. Obviously, we'll be up early tomorrow on Christmas morning with the kids, but then Tuesday is supposed to be my turn to sleep in. Only in order for me to sleep even a fraction of what he would in the morning, I'm going to have to take some unisom and sleep downstairs in the guest room all by myself so I can't hear the kids in the morning. We'll see if that really happens.

So I thought I should get up early this morning and get some stuff done before the kids are up and out of bed. Savannah of course, has been awake for like an hour already. We're going to need some naps today!

We enjoyed a nice, laid-back day yesterday. We had Don, Katie and Little Donnie over for brunch yesterday (mmmm... biscuits and gravy.... and we used the hot chocolate pot, Holly. That thing was awesome! Thanks!) to get together for Christmas. It was nice to hang out a bit. We don't get to see the Huffs nearly as much as we expected we would when we moved out here, so it was just nice to take some time to just relax with them and let the kids play and everything.




Todays agenda consists of baking, cooking and more baking.
We're going to have our big Christmas eve dinner before we go to a Christmas eve service this evening, so we'll be getting things ready for that, plus I'm hoping to get some gingerbread cookies baked, gingerbread muffins, Savannah and Ryan are making a gingerbread house, and I want to get some of my favorite Christmas cookies done, Chocolate Crinkles. Oh, and also a pie for dessert tonight. I had big plans of making all this yummy stuff this year... I found so many great and different fudge recipes, peppermint bark, and plenty of Christmas cookies. But between running out of time to make some of that for gifts, and not enough people around to eat it all here, I have to pick and choose our favorites and we're doing it all in one day! Here's a bit of pretty much the only baking we've done so far this season... we frosted and stacked star shaped cookies to make a Christmas trees for our neighbors. Savannah loved this project and of course we had to make some extra stars for us!

So after church tonight we'll come home and each open our one present (new Christmas jammies) before the kids go to bed, and then we don't have much to do this evening after that... I have everything wrapped and ready to go except for putting together the big toys from Santa. Savannah's getting a long awaited scooter and we have a table and chair set for thier playroom and a little pop-up tent for Sawyer. Then we'll stuff the stockings, sprinkle the tree with some tinsel, and I'm planning on hitting the pillow quite early tonight, as I'm sure we'll be up bright and early tomorrow.

Christmas day the plan is to open our presents and lounge around all day. We'll never get out of our pajamas, make some homemade donuts when we get hungry mid-morning, and then spend the day playing and napping and snacking on our candy, donuts and leftover ham.

Later on next week I think we may head up north to the Huff's cottage. First I thought Ryan and Don were just talking about going up there if there was snow for the sleds, but now Ryan's thinking he wants to go regardless of the weather, just to get out of town. So we'll probably head up there Friday, possibly even Thursday night and come home late Saturday or Sunday. On Monday we invited friends over for a big New Years Day dinner. We invited the whole like six people we know here, as well as some friends from out of town. Not sure who's coming yet, as I've heard no RSVP's, but I'm sure someone will show up. If not, we'll be having another feast all to ourselves I guess!

So that's what the next week looks like for us... kind of kicked back and relaxed, but with some fun stuff thrown in there and lots of family time together. The perfect Holiday week!