Christmas time is here... Part One

What a busy couple of weeks! Getting ready for Christmas is always an adventure. I had to drive the two hours to pick up Mark on Christmas Eve. I started out early and thankfully my mother stayed home with the children. I didn't even make it a block before I was stuck in the snow. The city did not plow the roads! It was a mess but the worst part was the five...yes FIVE people that walked and drove past me and never offered to help. Some stood and watched me! Spirit of Christmas? More like Christmas Grinches. Not a very good start to the trip and it put me in a foul mood. Thankfully I talked to Pete and he made me laugh which brightened my mood. The roads were a terrible mess. At points there would be a line of cars all doing 45 mph. When I finally decided to turn around I was past the halfway point. I decided to keep going because at least I would have Mark with me going back and that would be better than going it alone. When I was about to merge with about of traffic and try to get onto another freeway all the snow from the top of the van slide down the window. This stopped the wipers and I could not see a thing! Thankfully I knew there was a car next to me that had just merged on so I could slip behind him to get to my exit/on ramp. Then I put on the flashers and tried to pull over. Because of the road conditions everyone was going really slow...thank God! It was frightening but fixed rather easily. After that point it was just rain the rest of the way. Of course on the way back we ran back into the terrible road conditions. I prayed a lot :-) We made it home and the children were so happy to see daddy.

Christmas day was a blast. I loved watching the kids open their gifts. And let me just say that my family and friends are kind, sweet, and generous. We did not go overboard with the gifts this year. Henry and Irene each got a couple of gifts that were just for them and the rest were gifts for them to share. That's the great thing about having young kids close together in age...they like the same things. So they were both happy with the gifts, especially the Elmo's Kitchen, and we were pleased to have not spent a fortune. My family and friends had a tremendous amount of gifts for the kids. The house looks like a toy store exploded in it. I was amazed at all the gifts the received. And yet the gifts were the toys I would have liked to have gotten the kids but didn't want to blow the budget on. Amazing how that worked out! The Lord provides...through my family :-)

My brother Peter and his girlfriend Ashley drove the very long drive from Virginia on Christmas Eve. They stayed the night at my dad's and had Christmas morning with him and my brother Matt before heading up here. This was the first time we were meeting Ashley. She and I had become good friends on Facebook but still I was worried that she wouldn't like me in person....the usual. But when they showed up...it was like we had known each other for years! She was so easy to be around. As a family we could tease, bicker, bitch, moan, and Ashley just joined in :-) We love you Ashley! Oh yeah...Ashley brought her Chihuahua Mollie up too. Chang Po was in LOVE!!!

My mother made a super yummy Christmas dinner of turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing and all the other goodies that go with. Later that night we put the children to bed. My mom stayed at the house with them and Peter, Ashley, Mark and I went to the casino. For some reason we thought we could get a drink there but being Christmas day we couldn't. Instead we played "high roller" with our dollar each. Yes...a dollar. Then we ordered some pizza from the deli and took it home to share with mom. We stayed up late, 12:30am. Late for those of us with kids! It was a fantastic Christmas!

Photos by Ashley Crockett and Pete Wisniewski