Christmas Countdown

Five more days!

The tree is up, lit, and decorated.  I even remembered to water it. In fact, I'm so on top of my tree watering responsibilities, I caused a minor flood in the living room.  Note to self: make sure the carpet is dry before trying to suck up stray pine needles with the vacuum or chaos will ensue.

The stockings are hung and I hope I got enough stuff with which to stuff them.   You can't see mine or Craig's, but they're up there.  I hope Craig got a little something for my stocking. It's kind of sad to have to stuff your own. Of course, I do have a few things in reserve just in case I need to fill out the toe or something.

The gifts have been purchased, wrapped and secretly stashed in the guest room closet.  I told the girls that the Christmas Wish List Deadline has come and gone, so any addendums or amendments will have to be taken up with the jolly elf for next year. 

Here's Morgan's list.  I think she had several pages and gave one to each of her grandmothers and one to me.  Covering all of her bases, it would seem.  Top items include a coloring book, a stand to put it on (an easel), six sets of paint, brushes, a stool to sit on, and a plate for the paint (a palette).  The second page gets into more descriptive talk of magic wands and spell books.  This should be an interesting Christmas morning. 

 Coever kept it short and simple with some illustrations so there would be no confusion. That would be a Zhu-Zhu pet castle set, coloring book, Nintendo DS (DS for those in the know), and perfume.

The menu for Christmas dinner has been planned, tweaked, and all the items have been purchased.  It took the better part of the morning and into the afternoon, as well as trips to two separate grocers, but we are prepared.  All I can say is that the family better come hungry.  During this marathon grocery run,  we talked about being on the Nice List and the Naughty List.  I asked the girls to give me some examples of when they had been nice in the past few days.  

Coever, taking a deep breath, said, "Well. . . .when I was at school? I didn't push Isabella to get out of my way to use the crayons!"

Oh boy.

Not to be outdone, Morgan inhaled deeply before informing me, "Well! I didn't cry when Mom said that we couldn't watch anymore television last night."

Oy.

I suppose what you don't do is just as important as what you actually do do, so technically, that counts as being nice.  

Moving on. The Christmas dresses arrived, which meant the photo for the Christmas card could be taken.  The cards, in turn have been stuffed, addressed, stamped and sent.   There were a few minutes during the envelope licking that I felt like that episode from Seinfeld and I was pretty sure I was going to go into an envelope glue induced coma. 

Here are a few practice shots from our Christmas Card photo shoot.

Would you believe they were actually fighting over who would get tied up? If I'd been on my game, I'd have tied up the both of them, taken the picture and then gone downstairs for a cup of coffee.  They both enjoyed it so much, I had to have them rock, paper, scissors it out to determine who would be tied up on the card.  Rock, paper, scissors has miraculously become our peace keeping, problem solving technique around the house.  Of course, Morgan caught on early that Coever tends to favor paper over, and over (and over and over), so more often than not, Morgan scissors her way to the win.

School is out for vacation and all of the Christmas parties and pageants have been attended. Morgan's school had a pageant last Friday.  Of course I planned to be there, but I had to do some serious maneuvering to make sure I was on time.  I had Coever go to school with a friend so I could get Morgan to school on time and make sure I secured a seat for myself and my camera.

The pageant was scheduled to start promptly at 9am. We got to school at our normal time of about 8:15 and the place was packed.  There were some open seats in the back, but I was hoping to get a little closer for some pictures of Morgan and the crew of angels.  I was about to slide myself into a pew when this voice says, "Taken! Taken! This row is all taken!" I felt like Forrest Gump when he got on the bus for the first day of school. Um, what happened to the Christmas spirit? We're in a church!  Long story short, the seats in the back were just fine. I got to see Morgan do her thing; the entire living nativity and performance was lovely. And it lasted all of 20 minutes.  There truly are Christmas miracles!

Sitting in the back pew of the church, watching Morgan belt out "Gloria" with the chorus of angels, and then seeing her see me when she recessed down the aisle, I felt nostalgic for all the times it was me coming down the row and catching my mom's eye.  Maybe I'm getting sentimental as the holiday season progresses, but I realize how much behind the scenes stuff my mom did to make our holidays and our in between times so special.  After the pageant, I called her up and thanked her for all of her sojourns to my elementary school, my middle school, my high school where she sat and applauded concerts, honor society inductions, student council installations and the like.  I think that phone call was all the Christmas present she needed. 

All in all, it is shaping up to be a wonderful Christmas holiday.