Christmas

Wow. Its finally here and gone,well not completely. Every year I tell myself that I'll be on top of things and get ready for Christmas in advance, but it never happens. At least, for the last two years, my excuse has been the architectural exams. This year I got nothing. I played on Thanksgiving Day instead of putting up lights (I put up the tree though) and my weekends were shot between bad weather and church activities. I did almost all of my Christmas shopping this last Tuesday night.

Its not over either. Sarah and I are trying to put things together to take a trip down to Idaho tomorrow. My whole family will be there for my brother's wedding next week. It will be nice to see my family and spend some time with my brother and his fiance, but wow, is it going to be a fast paced, crammed week.

Anyway, this was our Christmas. We finally got everything ready and promised the kids we'd do an activity night leading up to Christmas Eve. I left work around 3:00, riding my bike slowly on the icy roads. At about 3:30 I looked out the front window and saw billowing smoke coming from the refinery that I had just ridden past on my way home. We were on edge, checking the news constantly, partly because we were worried about our friends that work there and partly because of the proximity to our home. They got the fire under control at about 5:30 and no one was injured, which we were grateful for. The fire did rain ash down in our neighborhood and sent smoke and fumes all over the city. Supposedly the fire had "no negative environmental impact." (sarcasm implied) We were all light-headed and nauseous the rest of the evening.

Aside from feeling a little off on Christmas Eve, we did enjoy ourselves. We were able to hold the kids attention long enough to read Luke 2 while they played with their nativity scenes. We even got a few Christmas songs in before they were bouncing off the walls with excitement for Santa's visitation. We tracked Santa's movements around the world on the online Santa Tracker and the girls asked every five minutes, "Where is Santa now?" We let them open a couple presents last night and they spent the rest of the evening playing with their new toys.

This morning Sydney was the first one up and burst into our room. "SANTA CAME!" To which I replied, "Its only 4 O'clock. Go back to bed." I was kidding but was desperate for any chance of getting more sleep (it was really 7:30). When she ran off crying I figured we'd better get up. What a mean Dad. She got over it real quick. There's not much more to say of the events of this morning that I can't just say with pictures so here goes.

We had a great Christmas and hope that Christmas found you all well. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!