Our Early Christmas Eve and Day

I know I've told this story before, but this is my blog so whatever.  

Back when Brandon and I were dating he made sure I would be okay with being a pilot's wife.  He told me that he would most likely be out flying on birthdays and holidays.  He asked me if I'd be okay with that.  My response was something like, "That's just fine with me.  I think Christmas Day is a let down anyway."

We always planned on telling our kids that we had a special deal with Santa Claus.  That since Daddy had to work on Christmas Santa would deliver our presents on a different day.  We even did that three years ago when we celebrated Christmas on the 27th of December.  

Well this year we decided that Santa's special deal applies to families who are traveling over the holidays. So we "signed up" to have Santa deliver presents to our house on Saturday the 14th.  That way we wouldn't have to worry about bringing all our presents with us to Utah and back.  Also we didn't want to miss out on any of our Christmas Day traditions when we were staying at someones house. 

We went to see some holiday lights for Our Christmas Eve activity.  We drove out to the Army owned Belton Lake Outdoor Recreation Area or BLORA where they have over 100 moving Christmas light displays.  This is a bad picture of the entrance. Our camera isn't that great at night photography.  

We didn't want the kids to fall asleep in the car on the way there so we turned on Polar Express on the DVD player.  Charlotte fell asleep anyway.  When we got to the BLORA I gave all the kids a candy cane to eat while looking at the lights.  Charlotte wouldn't wake up until I put the candy cane in her mouth.  She perked right up as soon as she tasted the sugar.

The lights were pretty cool to look at. They had a nativity scene, the 12 days of Christmas, and a lot of silly ones with Santa and his reindeer and elves.

This one was of a helicopter.

At the very end we went though a tunnel of dancing lights.  It reminded me of the trip to Toontown in "Who Framed Rodger Rabbit."  Brandon said it was like ludicrous speed in "Space Balls."

Here is a still picture of what it looked like.

Lydia fell asleep on the way home.  Derrick and Charlotte stayed awake.  I was worried that Charlotte wouldn't go to sleep because of her little nap.  I needed her to sleep so I could work on the doll house.  But my worries were in vain.  Charlotte told me she needed to go to sleep so Santa could come.  Then she went into her room and never came out again.  I wish that could happen every night.  

Brandon and I went right to work on the doll house.  He did some things with it and then started wrapping presents and getting the stockings ready.  He had so much fun making the stockings look cute.

Then we traded and I wrapped some presents while he finished up some things on the house.  It was around 2:00 am at this point and I was doing an even more terrible than usual job wrapping the presents.

Then we put everything out under the tree.  I can't believe how many presents we ended up getting for our kids.  A few weeks ago our neighbor Silvia brought over a HUGE bag of high quality toys for the kids.  She also gave us a three piece play couch.  We could have pulled of an awesome Christmas for the kids with just those toys.  But we also qualified for the on post Santa's Workshop that is available to children between the ages of 6 months and 12 years old.  We were able to pick out 2 toys, a book, a stocking stuffer, and a stuffed animal for each of our three older kids.  On top of all that we had some gifts that we bought, and the doll house.  Oh and our neighbor Ange brought a few presents for the kids too.

On Christmas morning our living room went from looking like this . . .  

 . . . to this

We had a lot of fun opening presents.  The girls loved ripping the wrapping paper.  Derrick, on the other hand, could have cared less.  He just played with his pink vacuum.  Then he got out the laundry basket and pushed that around.  I traded him the laundry basket for one of the new blue baskets that we bought as a present so we could use our laundry baskets for their intended purposes again.  He pushed that around for a while.  We'd give him his presents to open and he'd just put them in the basket and push it around.  It was so funny.

I was really excited for him to open up the present with a toy turtle in it.  Derrick loves to point to pictures of turtles.  I thought he would really like one as a present.  I honestly squealed for joy when I found one at the Santa's workshop. He was a little less enthusiastic about it, but later he gave it hugs.    

The girls liked all of their presents.  They each got a doll with long hair.  When they opened those presents they immediately ran into the other room and got their other dolls out so they all could play.

After all the presents were open we started making breakfast.  And by we I mean I fed Veronica while Brandon cooked. We had french toast, sausage, and orange juice this year.

And then we sat around and relaxed the rest of the day.  I told Charlotte that I was proud of her for going to bed and staying there the night before.  She told me, "train didn't come."  Which I guess meant the Polar Express train didn't come get her and take her to the North Pole.  I asked her if she was expecting it to come and she said, "No."

The kids played with all their toys. Here they are after they figured out the turtle could walk.

I love lazy Christmas Days.  The best part of the whole day was that Christmas wasn't really over.  We still have lots of fun things planned, but now we can just enjoy them without stressing out over presents.  For once I didn't feel like Christmas Day was a let down after a months of parties.  I think we might do this every year whether we are travelling or not.

Veronica got a baby doll.  It was in the bag of toys and we figured she'd probably want a doll of her own before next Christmas. She didn't really care about it, but the girls thought it was neat that she had one.  They kept giving it to her all day long.  Here she is flashing one of her beautiful smiles.

Charlotte has had some imaginary puppies for months.  We found one dog in the toy bag and one at Santa's Workshop.  So now she has some real puppies.  She was so excited to get them.  We named the Dotson Hudley after the dog on Curious George.  

Derrick finally noticed all the new toys and had fun playing with them.

We all go candy in our stockings so we binged on that for a while.

One of my presents was a map for our kitchen wall.  Brandon and I put that up along with some art work the girls made when our neighbor Ange babysat them while we went to Santa's Workshop to pick out the toys.

We could have gone to the City of Killeen's Christmas parade, but we were having too much fun doing nothing.  So we made pizza and then watched one of our new movies.

The kids went to bed at a decent time which was good because we had another big day to get ready for - Veronica's blessing day.