Christmas Eve

Well. That's it. I thought to myself around 5 pm on Christmas Eve.
Christmas is ruined.

Not that I was being dramatic or anything.

I was sitting on the couch with two of my children. My son was sitting in the rocking chair, and the baby was peacefully sleeping. She was the ONLY one with any sort of peacefulness whatsoever in the whole house.

It started out... not SO bad, really. I mean, the kids had spent the night with Grandma and Grandpa Thursday night. Pretty great, right? Mom and Dad get to have a whole evening to themselves (well, plus baby, but still) to get that last minute shopping done, wrap the rest of the gifts, maybe even stay up late watching a Christmas movie!

Except the part where the baby fussed and Mommy fell asleep at 7:30 after wrapping exactly TWO gifts. Perhaps procrastinating on that wasn't such a good idea?

So Christmas Eve Day started Reeeaaally early for me so I could get the rest of those gifts wrapped.

Like 4 am early.

Five hours of wrapping and setting up confusing electronics later and I was ready to head out to have a nice relaxing breakfast with the hubby and baby before picking up the rest of the kids. But the restaurant was really packed and we had so much to do we decided to skip it.

So no breakfast.

I. Do. Not. Do. Well. With no breakfast. At least when I'm nursing a little one. The rest of the time I could take it or leave it, but when I'm nursing, I'm starving pretty much.... all the time.

Picked up the kids, headed over to the grocery store to get last minute food stuffs, then to the dollar store to help a couple kids pick out their gifts for siblings, then to the parts store to pick up a couple of things for the new (old) car and we're off....

....and we're OFF.....

....AND....

....We're....

...still waiting in line at the PARTS STORE?

WHY there's a long line at the parts store on Christmas Eve is still a mystery to me.

I mean, really. If you have THAT hard of a time coming up with gift ideas for your girl, PLEASE use the phone-a-friend lifeline already!!! Poll the audience, do a 50-50, ANYthing but go to the parts store, people!

The Jeff Foxworthy song kept running through my head as we sat there waiting..."Four big mud tires, three shotgun shells, two huntin' dogs, and some parts to a Mustang GT..."

*sigh*

Finally got home, fed the family a late lunch, sent the kids to their rooms to straighten up for Sabbath, got the baby to sleep, and started work on the rolls for Christmas dinner.

About half an hour later I realized I'd used self-rising flour instead of bread flour.

In fact, I was out of bread flour.

Sent the hubby to the store. Started a new batch.

Kids woke the baby up. Kids made new messes. Kids ALL out of sorts after a late night sleepover.

Dinner had to wait since I needed a bread machine for the pizza crust and the bread machines were busy making up for lost time with the rolls that had to be thrown out.

We opened a gift package from out west, and before I knew it my house was being overtaken by Flubber. That's right, flubber. The stuff is AWESOME!

Except when Mommy's on the phone. They KNOW when Mommy's on the phone they can get away with SO much more!

Three tornadoes tore around the house with screams of delight and peals of laughter as they chased each other with pink, glittery, flubber. I had bits of flubber all over the kitchen and rubbed into my couch.

Time for a new direction.

I'd promised the kids that we'd build that gingerbread house from the kit that had been sitting around the kitchen for a week or so. I tried to juggle the building of the house between rolls, pizza, cleaning, green bean casserole and potato soup cooking, sweeping, dish washing... oh and the load of diapers that needed to be washed and line dried before Sabbath, half of which is still on the line...

Yeah, that didn't go so well. So Daddy got volunteered to take over on the gingerbread house. I was really hoping for a 45-60 min. project, but they had every bit of candy and gumdrops used up in 15 minutes flat with the least amount of fuss, fun, or icing as is humanly possible. 'Cause that's just how Daddy rolls. Efficient.

*sigh*

At least I took a sec and grabbed the camera before it was all over.



The ruckus of kids running amok began again approximately 20 seconds after the last candy was pasted onto the gingerbread house.

Mommy was about done.

And then someone started crying (no, not me, I saved that for later...) and next thing I know I'm trying not to freak out on the kid who had been running around the living room with a sharp metal hot-dog roaster (where on earth did they find that within the last 10 seconds?!) nearly poking her sister's eye out!!!

"ALL RIGHT!!! EVERYONE!! TIME. OUT!!!" I yelled at the Christmas tree.

It seemed to be mocking me over there, after all. Pretty and bright and cheery while all this chaos was going on.

And that brings me back to sitting on the couch with two of my children. ALL I was asking for was 5 minutes of absolute sitting-stillness. Quietness. No questions. No toys. No books. No bouncing around. 5 minutes of stillness.

Lots of big, deep sighs filled the room.

And that was just me.

It took about 10 minutes of preliminary wiggles and giggles to finally get settled down, and then we all sat there in the silence.

"Aaaahhhhh", I could hear my soul saying.

Then I noticed that my five year old had gone from being wigglishly still to really, truly still. Like barely making the movements for breathing kind of still.

Wow, I thought, we're really making some progress here!

"Good Job, Emmy!", I praised her.

*** SOB *** "MommyIamthinkingaboutdaddyinthefireandgettingBURNEDandit'smakingmesoSAD-D-D-D!"

*SNIFF*

*SOB*

....and so commenced 5 minutes of good, solid wailing in my arms.

And yes, my daughter has a VERY active imagination.

Daddy was nowhere near the fire. He was in the kitchen trying to get the pizza served up on paper plates so Mommy could be sane.

Or at least, appear to be sane for the sake of good holiday memories.

I mean, that's the important thing, right? I asked myself. Making the great memories that will stay with those crazy kids throughout their whole life and make them homesick for mom and pop when they're off living their own lives?

After dinner we set to practicing our musical selection for the Christmas program at church the next morning. Let me just say that the memory-making bit slipped to the back of my mind as I tried desperately to corral 3 sleep-deprived, sugared up (hey! stop sneaking the gumdrops from the gingerbread house!!!) kids into practicing their song half an hour past bedtime.

Well, hopefully they'll remember at least some of the fun and not just the crabby mother when they're older.

"There's always Christmas Day to make up for it...", I mumbled as I slipped into dreamland shortly after 8 pm. "There's always Christmas Day."