We arrived at Aunt and Uncle's house which was thankfully live-tree free (a HUGE thank you for abandoning your Christmas tree and opting for a fake one exclusively to accomodate me, Aunt and Uncle!!) and had a great evening with them and met Uncle's dad and his family that were also staying with them. He and his wife have two kids similar in age to Ace and Mae and for being in the same house together for 3 days they did wonderful together.
On Christmas Eve we occupied our time with Grandma Carol making snowflakes with all the kids and a few other of the adults joined in on the fun from time to time as well. Some played Scrabble, for a while all the kids enjoyed games on various Aunts, Parents, Grandparent's phones.... it was a pleasant day and night.
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| I cheated and looked on Pinterest. Martha Stewart hooked me up on the how to. :) |
Germa came over and she gave them candy canes. Mae ate the entire thing and was the fastest AND cleanest of the four of kids. :) Uncle did very well to keep us very well fed as well throughout the day!
Christmas eve we went for a walk and enjoyed a stroll past houses decorated in Christmas lights. I created a little scavenger hunt sheet for each of the kids to take with them and find the items on various houses as we walked. They had fun with it. Mae called it her purse and was quite upset a few times when it fell to the ground. :) After our stroll the kids were settled into the bed, Grandmas went home, and the rest of us remained awake and enjoyed a semi-traditional game of Kings Cup and some Taboo as well. It was a lot of fun. And we enjoyed a skype visit with Gran and Pop Pop to ring in Christmas day officially. :)
Christmas morning arrived and we ate and had slow start to the morning and then the time to unwrap presents was upon us! It was a lot of fun with all the kids. :)
We had a lazy rest of the morning, I skyped in to see my nieces and the rest of my family opening some Christmas, and then Aunt, Grandma Carol, and myself bid adieu to the rest of the family and headed to the movies! Yes, we had 1:30 tickets to see Les Miserables! Now, let me just say I absolutely LOVE this book. I've read it three times, I've seen the Broadway play (off Broadway) three times, I own and exhausted my VHS (yes, VHS) copy of the 25th Anniversary stage production, and I have stomached through the movies that thus far had been produced (deplorable by the way) so when I heard that a rendition of the musical adaptation was going to be produced I waited with baited breath in the hopes that this amazing work of art would be done justly. Let me just say I was not disappointed. I was breathless at the acting several times, the raw emotions the actors brought to the character was bone chilling in some instances and heart warming in others. The directors choice to have the actors sing live was by far the best one ever made. Ever in film production. Ever. Did I like it? I loved it. It was the perfect thing to do and see on Christmas Day (yes I know it's kind of a downer in many respects but the beauty of the humanity and love that surpasses the bleak times gets me every time and I love it.) We left the theater and headed home happy with our experience.
Dinner was just getting underway as we came home: prime rib and lobster - why THANK YOU Uncle!! It was delicious and a perfect end to the visit. The kids said good night to their aunt as she was headed to work at 6am the next day and we were headed home around 10am and they were off to bed. The adults finished off Christmas night watching Die Hard. :)
A wonderful visit and great time with some of our favorite people. We drove home, got Pixel who had a perfect report card but was super happy to see us and we went home. Another great Christmas for our family. Truly a blessing.
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