Before I launch into the details of Christmas 2014, I want to share some of the professional photos we had done in her Christmas dress, which Seth picked out.
I love this one because you can see that she is wearing Grandma Jeanne's baby bracelet.
So, Christmas Eve. We had just returned from Oregon the night before and I had gone immediately after we got home to the grocery store to buy the ingredients for everything I was supposed to make for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. We woke up Christmas Eve morning and made two batches of marshmallows. Evie helped Seth pour the gelatin into the bowl to let it bloom and she loved watching the red food coloring get whipped through the peppermint flavored batch. After the mallows were put out to set, we headed to Granna and Grannadaddy's house where we spent the late morning and early afternoon playing with Granna, Grannadaddy, Uncle Ryan, Addie, and Will. The kids were so excited to see each other and Addie and Evie spent a good deal of time hugging one another. They played together very well for the most part, and we all enjoyed a very good visit. Then we went home so Evie could get a nap and Seth and I could finish cutting and dredging the marshmallows to be ready for Christmas Eve dinner.
I have been singing in the church choir again since October, so I had to leave for the Christmas Eve 5:30 service earlier than Seth and Evie, who was still napping, so poor Seth had the task of getting himself and Evie ready in the Christmas Eve finery. Seth reports that he and Evie had quite a difficult time getting out the door between her drowsiness and a series of bloopers: as he was carrying her out to the car, the milk cup splattered all over her so he had to take her back inside and clean her up, during which time she asked to go potty and ended up getting her dress ties in the toilet. So then he had to wash those off, try to dry them, and rush to church. They were late, but they made it, and I left the choir loft after the final anthem and got to sit with my little family during the candlelight portion of the service. Evie held the candle (with my two hands holding firmly onto hers) and Seth, Olivia and I sang "Silent Night" in German instead of English, like we have done for so many years, and it was just the most wonderful moment - having everyone together and seeing the wonder in Evie's eyes.
The cousins were a little rowdy after the service, having sat still for over an hour, but I love this picture.
We went back to Granna and Grannadaddy's where Granna had prepared our "Christmas Eve feast" as I coined it around age 10: ham, turkey, biscuits, 7 different kinds of cheeses, plus mustards and jellies, spinach dip, artichoke dip, crackers, 5 different kinds of fruit, bing cherry salad, and 4 different kinds of sparkling juices. It is probably my favorite meal of the year, and I love the excitement and enjoyment that the family has at that moment. When I was growing up, it was the Christmas Eve dinner for our family of four: Mom, Dad, Ryan and me, but in recent years we have included Kathy, Rickie, Olivia, and Grandma Jeanne, and some of Mom's family if they are able to make it. This year it was just my Dad's side of the family, though, so we had a more intimate setting, with only 10 adults and 3 kids. My cousin Olivia offered to sit at the kids' table to keep an eye on them and give a little more room to the dining room table. I enjoyed listening to her as she talked with the kids about what they were eating and I was particularly amused when she announced that they were going to have "rounds" where they were take a bite of one kind of thing: the cheese round, the fruit round, and the meat round. This helped make sure they got a little of everything and didn't just eat the biscuits.
On Christmas Eve, after our dinner, my Dad and I and my brother if he is in town and whoever else wants to tag along go to St. Mary's Episcopal Church for their 11pm service, which really starts at 10:30pm if you want to get there to hear all of the music. So my original plan had been to have Evie stay at Granna's and sleep on the couch until I could pick her up after the service, since both Seth and I wanted to go. But my aunt Kathy offered to go stay at our house while Evie slept, so we went home and put Evie to bed and Kathy stayed there while Seth, Olivia, and I went to church. Kathy even baked my cake for Christmas Day for me, and when we came home, she was asleep on the couch so Olivia helped us wrap presents. We had two presents to get ready for Addie and Will for Christmas Day and we wrapped Evie's presents from us (the practical gifts of a toddler pillow and pillowcase and a booster seat and placemat so she can graduate from her high chair to eating at the table with us) and the present from Santa (a stuffed horse, from the movie Tangled, which Evie refers to as "the horsey movie" even though it's really about Rapunzel). We also wrapped the presents that had been sent by Seth's family for Hanukkah since we had been out of town during all of Hanukkah. So Evie had quite the stack of presents on Christmas morning and I was so grateful for the help of my baking elf Kathy and wrapping elf Olivia.
Seth and I finally went to bed around 3am Christmas morning, after sharing a few minutes alone talking about how blessed we are with our, having just seen the family in Oregon and spending time with my family that day, and how wonderful it is to have these moments, raising Evie, that you dream of when you think about having kids: prepping for Christmas Day, for the excitement your child will have on Christmas morning.
And it didn't disappoint. We woke up around 9am Christmas morning and got Evie dressed and then let her see her stack of presents. This was round #1 of present opening, just gifts from us or from the out-of-town family and friends (Grammy, Jill, Sydney, Matt, and Wolfie)
This was the only shot I could get of her Christmas outfit from head-on. She's looking at the enormous stack of presents on the table (we didn't put up a tree this year)
Opening her gift from Grammy
Seth's mom made this hat, and Evie loved playing with the hammering bench that Uncle Matt sent.
After opening presents at our house, we loaded the car with presents for the cousins and baking supplies for my pies for the next meal and headed to Granna and Grannadaddy's, where we did presents from the grandparents and my brother's family to each other (round #2 of presents). We had some breakfast and started setting the table for lunch while the kids played with their new toys. Everyone shared very well and we let the kids eat some of the candy from the Christmas stockings because, you know, it's Christmas!
Around lunch time, Kathy, Rickie, Olivie, and Grandma Jeanne came over and ate with us and then we had round #3 of present opening for the day. After presents, I finished making cream pies like my mom's mom used to make for Christmas, a tradition that I have taken on, and then we headed to my uncle's house for dinner and round #4 of presents.
Now, I am the 5th of 14 grandchildren on my mom's side of the family (as opposed to being 2nd out of 3 on Dad's side) so there have always been a lot of kids running around at family holidays. In my generation, there are 9 boys to us 5 girls, but in Evie's generation, there are only 2 boys out of 7 great-grands, and only one of the boys (Will) was there, and actually my youngest cousin, Lydia, is younger than the oldest great-grand (Addie), so there was a pack of 6 kids age 6 and under running through the house, laughing and having a great time, and Evie was right there in the middle of them! She hadn't had a nap and I think she was running on fumes, but, boy, was she running! I loved seeing all those kids enjoying being together. They were going so fast I couldn't even get a picture of all of them at once, and certainly not a picture where they weren't blurry from being in motion.
By the end of the night, Evie was zonked out in Aunt Aimee's lap.
It was a wonderful Christmas Day and I thought that with all the excitement and lack of nap Evie was going to be passed out. Unfortunately, she woke up every three hours that night. I'm not sure if she was over-tired or over-excited, but something was causing her to keep waking up and crying. Finally at 5:30am I gave her some medicine in case it was some kind of allergy related problem and she slept for 6 more hours. When she got up, we went back to Granna and Grannadaddy's to spend the day with Ryan and family before they left that evening to go back home. Olivia came over and so did my aunt Kristy and cousin Lydia and the kids had a blast playing together again. At one point Olivia and Ryan became horses or dragons that the kids wanted to ride on, which was pretty hilarious.
Olivia braided the girls' hair, which was a big hit.
Evie and Will proved once again that sometimes the best toys are what we plan to throw away. They spent a while playing with the tube from a roll of wrapping paper.
We went to dinner with Ryan and Aimee and then said our goodbyes and I took Evie home to put her to bed after yet another day without a nap. That night, though she slept hard and woke up 12 hours after being in bed, in a great mood. All day Saturday she was easy-going and sweet. She enjoyed playing with her new toys, and I got out the Fisher Price manger scene and she loved playing with the animals and Mary, Joseph and Baby Jesus. In fact, at nap time she said, "Baby Jesus go night-night" so she took the little Jesus/manger figure with her to bed. When she woke up, we went to see Granna and helped eat some of the leftovers and then went to the light display at Shelby Farms where they had a lot of different animals made of Christmas lights. Evie enjoyed it, especially the sea creatures and the enormous alligator they put in the lake.
That night, I put her to bed, with Baby Jesus again, per her request. About 3 hours after being asleep, she cried out and Seth and I turned down our movie so we could hear what she was saying. We'd been sitting there watching Christmas movies and drinking homemade cocoa with our homemade peppermint marshmallows. We heard her cry out again and she'd said, "I want Baby Jesus!" Baby Jesus, like her other little animals she sleeps with, had fallen through the slats of the rail onto the floor and she couldn't find him. Seth went in there and put Baby Jesus back in Evie's bed and returned, giggling at Evie's declaration of "I want Baby Jesus". I couldn't help but think what a perfect Christmas moment that was.
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