The flowing of Christmas with our kids (2010)

    part 1 -
    Early in November of this year, Byron and Cyndi had decided that they were coming back to MI for ALL of Christmas this year! Due to having gone to school and working retail jobs out of state, Byron had not attended extended family Christmas gatherings in about six years. This year, they were going to!
    Then two weeks before Christmas, his boss let it be known that he was denying Byron's days off request. In-fact, he had scheduled Byron for the overnight (11 p.m. to 7 a.m.) shift for both Christmas Eve and Christmas Night (as well as New Year's Eve and New Year's Night - insert rolling eyes here).
    So we shifted plans a little. They were going to head this way just as soon as his Christmas night shift ended.
    Then near the end of the week prior to Christmas, Kayla's mom's side of the family decided they were going to do their gathering the day after Christmas - at 1:00.
    So we shifted plans a bit more. We let Byron and Cyndi know that we were moving times back to 4:00. If Byron wanted to get some sleep before heading here, he could. We'd have the big meal we had planned and then open gifts.

    The day after Christmas, Byron, Cyndi and Analyse arrived around 1:00. By 1:40, we sent the fighting dozing off Byron, on up to bed for a nap. About 20 minutes later, Analyse was ready for a nap as well. So when Brent and Kayla got here early, both Byron and Analyse were still napping. Nobody had a problem with it. In-fact, it was then decided to let Byron sleep till around 6. That way he'd be a bit more rested, and yet still want to go back to bed in a few hours. We were glad we had gone with the flow. Here is a picture of our fully rested little sweetheart when gift opening time came.

     Yes, I was referring to Analyse, not Byron ;-)

    Oh, and we had shifted yet again and decided to do gifts before eating. So we did gifts and then ate this wonderful meal Brian had headed up the preparing of.

         (St. Julian's non-alcoholic white bubbly :->)

    After the meal, we did stockings. ;-p  Why the smirk? See-e-e, our sons have always quibbled that we loved their girlfriends/wives better than we loved them. They based this on their perception that we did nicer things for the girls, and on a more frequent basis, than we had e-v-e-r done them for "our boys". Then a grandchild entered our lives. Oh my goodness. To listen to the "boys" take on things, you would think we had plumb forgot they existed. Chuckle, chuckle. Poor neglected guys! More chuckles....
    So Brian had decided that he was going to get an enormous stocking for Analyse this year just to egg the boys on. Then without even knowing our plans, Benson brought home a huge one from a party he had attended. God does have both excellent timing and a sense of humor!!!
    But it got even better! During our stop at Kohl's the day Brian had taken me shopping, he stumbled upon small sized stockings, with an initial embroidered on the front. And their original inexpensive price was even lower due to them being on sale. A bargain he could not pass u!! Smirk, smirk.
   Here is a picture of this years schemed on and God provided stockings. ;-p

    We put four different mini candy bars in each of our "kids" stockings. But there was no way we were going to fill Analyse's huge stocking with just candy!! Nor did we want to fill it with tons of toys. We already had two 'big' gifts for her (I'll be posting more about them soon). So I kept my brain working on the project while we were shopping, and the Lord guided me to perfect solutions. What did we get? A big bag of animal cookies. And two box's of different flavored kids fig type bars. And teething cookies. And three cute plastic bibs, that were larger sized and have velcro at the neck (bib ties and Analyse are not a good combination!!!) And a toy phone that makes noises and talks. And an adorable dollie. I intermittently stacked things in, rolling the bibs up so they filled better. And had the dollie sticking out the top.
    Side note about dollies here. I had no clue that finding a cute little dollie was going to be challenging!!! My goodness! Some of the dolls currently on the market are just not cute! And the majority of them have some type of an electronic part to them, such as a beating heart. I wanted a cute, simple little young girl dollie / cuddle toy. Finally found one at Kohl's. Definitely not where I would think to go look for a dollie! But now you too know where to get one. ;-).
    Yes, we did give our kids different stockings later.... I'll cover that in a different posting ;-)

    Oh, and for the record, while we had originally 'planned' this time for this and that time for that, and then changed it, and then changed it again ... we finally started opening our gifts around 6:45p.m. or so, and ate dinner around 8:00. Everybody here was completely fine with all of it. There were no negative comments at all. :-D We have learned that you plan, then life invariably happens, and if at all possible, it is best if you can flow with it, rather than creating white water rapids out of the situation. While white water rafting might be fun, it usually only is when you plan to go to Colorado and do it. ;-p

    After dinner we sat down to watch our yearly viewing of the movie "The Muppet's (version of) The Christmas Carol". We got about a third of the way into it, and over half of the family was sleeping. Cyndi and Benson chose to stay up and watch the rest of the movie. Life kept our plans flowing ;-p.