Merry Christmas!

I thought I would post some pictures of the holiday celebrating we've done over the past few days. It feels like a weekend to me, hard to believe tomorrow is Wednesday! The festivities started on Friday night - I made soup for dinner and the in law's came over with video rentals in hand. We watched two of the stupidest movies ever made. So stupid that we laughed through most of it. The first was "Midnight Clear" and the other was "Mr. Bean's Holiday".

Saturday was Christmas over at Troy's parent's in the evening. The gifts were abundant and the food was excellent. Here is a picture of our dinner - Alaskan Halibut (caught by my parents this summer) which is in of itself to die for, along with asparagus wrapped in bacon. Lucy took a nice nap during dinner so she would be well rested for all the activity that was to come. I would have to say she was a pretty good kid. She played nicely while everyone opened gifts, which took a couple hours I think, and didn't fuss at all. She made out like a bandit! Here is a picture of her in the new toboggan she got from Uncle Eric. As well as a picture of Eric in his new cooking pants! I think everyone can use cooking pants! Once they invent the total bodysuit made of apron material, I think I'll get one of those.

After gift opening we had chocolate lava cake, my contribution, which turned out pretty tasty! Here is Lucy in the aftermath:

Sunday was church and then we all had lunch together and napped in our respective chairs. I made foods for Christmas Eve while Troy and Paul watched the Vikings game.

Christmas Eve...we headed over to my grandparents (my step-dad's parents) in Roseville for the afternoon, did the usual, ate, opened gifts, played cards. Then headed to Lake Elmo to my cousin's home for my dad's side of the family's Christmas. Things were going pretty good, Lucy was adorable in her red Christmas dress. Then as I held her I felt a rumble. I thought maybe it's just gas (Lucy, not me!) but the smell hit me. So, of course, I passed her over to Troy for a diaper change. Well, I did not hear him yelling for me until my aunt came to get me. Here is Troy holding a semi-naked Lucy up in the air. She had MAJOR blow out (teething has done this to her quite a bit lately). We're talking covered in poo and we need to figure out how to get the poo clothes off the child in such a way not to get it anywhere else so I can give her a "sponge bath" with all the wipes that we had along. So she gets naked, daddy has to hold her while I wipe off the poo, and at this point she's loving it and she gets to go in her pj's!

But besides the poo incident it was a good time - lots of good food, and Lucy made off with quite a haul there too! Our house is in Christmas Chaos right now. We've done our best to get a couple things put away, but I sat down with Lucy this morning and went through what she has gotten. Lots of educational toys, some of which will go over to Nana's Daycare, lots of cute outfits too.

We headed over to my parents' later this morning for more present opening and a nice lunch. Len and Gerane, Keith and Kathy and their son, Jeff, came over too. We sat around laughing and telling stories and played a round of the game Scene It. We headed home in the snow around 6:30 and got Lucy down to bed. And then the post-holiday organizational syndrome hit...

Knowing that tomorrow we're going shopping for organizational items (bins, boxes, whatever) and that one of my big projects is clearing out that storage room, Troy and I emptied out the storage room tonight, and my word, that little 8x10 room unpacked equals a 14x20 room full of "stuff"! My plan is to paint that room (it's the only room in the house we haven't) and purge of a lot of stuff that we haven't looked at since we've been married. We're going to do a garage sale in the spring, so that gives me incentive to get things cleaned out. And our next organizational project is the "craft room". It's huge and needs to become a craft room, play room for Lucy and eventually my office (if we have more kids, my existing office will become Lucy's bedroom). And so on... Anyone who knows me knows I LOVE to be organized. I hate chaos and clutter and junk. Quite honestly, if someone would pay me, I would organize people for a living. I watch those TLC/HGTV shows on home makeovers and people who have too much stuff taking over their lives and try to heed the outlook they have - only keep the things you use or that you love, and the things that you love, show them off, don't keep them stored away in boxes for "someday", because that someday may never come. Other than keeping things in storage that are seasonal items (clothing, holiday decor) I never understood why people keep so much "stuff" for just in case.

I do have A box of memories that I showed Troy tonight. It was actually kind of fun and funny. Some were old boyfriend letters (actually only one letter, I think I've tossed all the others since I married my last boyfriend), report cards with teacher comments that Troy got a kick out of, old corsages and programs from weddings I've been in, yearbooks, my uniform shirt from Freshman year when I caught on fire, my grade school uniform skirt where, egads, I probably had a 20" waist, and newspapers/magazines from major life events like 9/11, Columbine, the start of the War in Iraq, etc., and of course some New Kids on the Block posters. And speaking of memory lane, we watched old Christmas videos from when my sister was a baby. And I'm in all of them so it's fun to see my changing hair styles. But gosh, I look back at me and back then I had (and probably still do) this distorted body image. I have always felt I was fatter than everyone else, back then I thought I was the fattest cousin, or not as skinny as the popular girls. But when I look at those videos, and see my old uniform skirts, my gosh, I'm jealous of that girl now! I hope Lucy never goes through that and I can raise her to be proud of the body she's been given and not obsess over the number in a pair of pants!

Ok, slight sidetrack there. ANYWAY, it's been a wonderful Christmas season. It seems like it went too fast, like we just got the tree up and now it's time to clean up. But we got to see most of our families and there was lots of laughing. Sam still hasn't had that baby. My bet is on Dec. 28th. I'll keep you posted.