Christmas Eve & Christmas

It was not the most jolly Christmas in the Crowl house this year. We tried to make the most of it, but to be honest, by the time Christmas evening rolled around I was ready for the day to be over. I think my quote to Ben was "this is the longest Christmas day in history." It was sad to see Maddie especially so sick and SO mad.

Christmas Eve was really fun.. the kids' spirits were lifted when the cousins came over. We fit in almost all of our traditions.. dinner, caroling, and hot cocoa. Sweet Saisha had made around 50 cards to hand out to each house that we visited. I don't think i'll ever forget her little wheeling backpack and her brave face and she proudly handed each person a card. It was the sweetest. For cousin gifts this year we gave each kid a craft to do at home. It was such a fun idea. Colter has been so into his mini car case, and we've tried a couple of the painting techniques that my sister gave Maddie.

And then it was Christmas..

We woke up bright and early (Maddie was getting up around 5:30 when she was sick. Funnnnnnn) We opened our stockings and then opened gifts and then sang Happy Birthday to Jesus while eating coffee cake. The gifts were a hit .. sometimes Colter can instantly decide that he doesn't like something, but that didn't happen this time. We kept things to a super minimum so it wouldn't overwhelm the kids and we played with each thing after opening it. By about 3 Maddie was so miserable I took her to urgent care to see if her ear infection had worsened. Nothing like a Christmas dr trip! They said she looked to be improving , but probably miserable from not napping or sleeping well at night. 

We had dinner at my sister's. She had such a beautiful set up with a Huuuuuuuuuuge table. We all made Mels Kitchen cafe side dishes and everything was super tasty. My favorite part of the night was watching Maddie and Harper laugh SO hard at each other. Harper would rub a rubber duck on the soap bar and then show Maddie the duck. They would laugh SO hard. We had to jet pretty quickly after boogspace gifts because the kids finally reached their limit. All in all, it was a pretty stressful day, but there were definitely moments I relaxed enough to realize what a blessing it is to even have a family to take care of. There are so many lonely people that spend the holidays without anyone near. Even though the kids were grumpy, I still have kids.

Merry Christmas to all and to all a GOOD NIGHT!