Christmas Break

I have made several attempts to write about our holidays, and they've all been totally incoherent rambling. In short, our holidays were...average. Definitely not horrible, but not super fantastic wonderful either. So instead of trying to share any stories, here are a few pictures from our week off. (And is it just me, or is it really weird to think that a week ago we were still in the midst of the holidays, at least at my house???)

We didn't get around to making Christmas dinner until December 29th. On Christmas Day Jeff wasn't feeling well, and I had already debated scrapping our dinner plans when Leon woke up SCREAMING from his nap and managed to wake up all his siblings. Leon was feverish, and everyone else was cranky, so on Christmas we had pasta with sausage and cauliflower. Everyone liked it and ate it with minimal complaining. Good enough. Then it was a few days before Jeff and I were both feeling good enough for me to be in the mood to cook. And it turns out, all the kids care about is our Christmas Eve make-your-own-taco feast and our New Year's Eve appetizers for dinner. And we did get those in. (Actually, they were disappointed that we also have not yet gotten around to eating our New Year's gumbo with black eyed peas, but hopefully that will happen tomorrow.) When we did finally make Christmas dinner, the girls helped cook. Ree was snapping asparagus while Natalia supervised.

The kids got window crayons for Christmas and decorated the house.

Guess which almost two-year-old girl also decorated the couch with her window crayons? On the bright side (?) we already needed to clean some prior drawings of hers off the couch. Two birds with one stone...

The boys, especially Leon, really wanted to have a game day with me. That didn't quite work out as planned, although we eventually figured out we could play board games at bedtime. On the actual game day, I ended up having to hang out with Natalia. She did figure out that the Hungry, Hungry Hippo board has great holders for her princess playing cards.

Since we've been married, I've made Christmas ornaments for our family every year. Some years (like those pre-children), the ornaments were fancy. Some years, not so much like the year the boys were born and I bought ornaments on clearance after the holidays and wrote our names on them. This year we finally made our ornaments on New Year's Eve. I'm glad I got a picture of this, because while I was at work yesterday, Natalia decided to "sort" the ornaments and took them apart. Jeff found a stack of red ornaments and a stack of letters that used to be on them. Love her!

And when all else failed, we got comfortable and watched TV.