Christmas Day 2014 (The one with lots of trains)

I've always had trouble reconciling how Christmas Day should be versus how it ends up .  It always seems like it should be such a wonderful, amazing, exciting, best-day-of the year type of day.  But that's not how it really is.  Instead it's a nice day, a relaxing day, and I'll dare say something of a let down type of day.   After a whole month of build-up an hour of opening presents just never seemed like enough.  

I've puzzled over my disconnect between Christmas Day fantasy/reality for years.  Last year I think I finally figured out part of the problem.  My love language isn't gifts.  That means that while I appreciate receiving presents, it's not the action that makes me feel super special and loved.  So opening presents on Christmas will never feel like the best thing that ever happened.  And that's okay, because I'm just not wired that way.

This realization freed me up to not worry too much about my feelings toward Christmas.  Instead I focused on things that would work with my love language.  My main love language is words, followed closely by time.  That's one reason having a Christmas Eve Party was so important to me.  Having lots of people around made me feel loved.  And when they told me that they liked the party, well that made me feel even more loved.        

Truthfully, the Christmas Eve Party was the highlight of my Christmas.  The whole Christmas Day thing was just a bonus.  And it was pretty great in and of itself.  Giving gifts is a lot more fun than receiving them.  I knew my kids would like the presents that Brandon and I had picked out and bought for them.

Brandon and I set out the presents after the kids went to bed.  All the presents were wrapped, but we had to set up a few of the bigger presents.  

Earlier in the day Charlotte had been talking to me about putting out milk and cookies for Santa.  She fall asleep before we could do that, but I knew it was important to her.  Brandon set out a plate and put a few cookie crumbs on it.  He also put a few drops of milk in a glass.  When Charlotte noticed it the next day she totally believed that Santa had ate the milk and cookies.

Last year Brandon's mom gave each of the kids a stuffed animal in their stocking when we were in Utah.  The kids didn't really latch on to any of the toys and I ended up boxing them up a few weeks later.  I pulled the stuffed animals back out and put them in the stocking again this year.  I even checked the picture from last year to make sure the animals went to the same kids.

Brandon hadn't finished wrapping my presents yet, so he sent me to bed and stayed up wrapping presents.  He stayed up pretty late.  That was okay though because the kids slept in until almost 8:00.  Lydia was the first child to wake up.  She came and snuggled in bed with me for a few minutes.  Then she ran to go check on the tree.  She came back yelling, "Mom, there's a stuffed kitty for me!"  We hurried and got the other kids up into the living room.

I wasn't sure how Derrick would react to the whole presents under the tree thing.  On his birthday he'd HATED the presents that I'd had waiting for him to open.  Well either he's grown up a lot in the past 8 months or he really liked his present.  We had a train track and more train cars waiting for him under the tree.  He started playing with it right away.

Charlotte and Lydia were super excited about opening presents.  They could find their presents based on whether or not they had a C or an L written on them.  But they were also willing to open any other presents that we had.  They liked everything that they got.

Derrick only cared about his present if it was a train.  We'd bought him a package of more train cars from Amazon.com and he liked that but with everything else he acted like he was saying, "Is it a train? No. Well then never mind."  I'm glad I bought those additional train cars from Amazon otherwise he wouldn't have cared about any of the wrapped gifts that he got. 

Veronica just kind of ran around and played with everything.  She got several stuffed animals and a doll.  She would say, "Oooohhhhh" and give her toy a big hug and then drop it to go look at something else.

Charlotte and Lydia liked the castle that we set up for them.  This was actually a present that our neighbor Ange gave us last year.  We'd never set it up and eventually I decided to just save it for this Christmas.  The girls got Princess dolls and My Little Pony figures so the castle was really fun for them to play in.

After all the presents were open the kids played with their toys.  They played and played and played.

Lydia was very happy to have a kitty.  We named it Milky after the cat in Curious George.  (Charlotte's dog Hundley is named after the dog on that show so this was keeping with the theme.) She also took possession of the kitten that Brandon's mom sent for Veronica.

Brandon made scrambled eggs for the kids and an omelet for him and me.  Derrick didn't want to leave his trains so I had to put the tray onto his booster to keep him in his seat.

We made sure the kids got some real food into them and then let them check their stockings.  They had candy and other fun things in their stockings.

Veronica was excited about the candy.

She was even more excited a few minutes later when she snuck into the castle and ate some candy that she found in there.

Brandon and the kids spent a lot of time playing trains. Brandon told me that he's always wanted a set like this.  Last year, after all the presents were bought, I remembered to actually ask the kids what they wanted for Christmas.  Lydia immediately piped up with, "Tracks! For a Train."  I felt bad that I didn't have any trains or tracks to give the kids last year.  Fortunately, they got great toys and I don't think they gave train tracks a second thought.  But Lydia's comment stayed with me.  So when one of my friends was selling a used wooden set for only $10 I immediately bought it.  I've been saving this set since July.  I'm glad it was such a big success.

Charlotte and Lydia liked playing with the train set too.  They like to watch Thomas and Friends with Derrick.  They know all the names of all the trains and so they were pretending to drive Percy and Emily and the diesels around the track to different locations. Of course their love for the train set was nothing compared to Derrick's.  He played with it from the moment he saw it, until he went to sleep 12 hours later.  I don't think I've ever given anyone a gift that they loved as much as Derrick loved his trains.

When he got tired of playing with the track he'd lay on the linoleum and drive the train around there.  He liked to whip the train around and watch all the cars follow.

We had a relaxing day full of pretty much doing nothing.  We watched movies (Night at the Museum 2, Cloudy with a chance of Meatballs 2, and The Big Year), we skyped with my parents, and we ate leftovers.  It was great.

The next day we decided that we HAD to get out of the house.  I decided that we should go out to the train park in Temple. We haven't been there since Mother's Day.  Even though it's been a while, Charlotte and Lydia still remembered how much they loved swinging together on the big swing there.  I love this picture of them together.

We went on a walk to look at the different train cars that they have on display.  Veronica is so funny.  She hates riding in the stroller and she hates holding my hand.  She just wants to walk around like the big kids.  She turned 15 months old on Christmas Eve and no matter how many times I do the math I keep thinking that number is wrong.  I feel like she is at least 18 months if not 2 years old.  She's wearing clothes that the twins didn't fit until they were over 18 months old and she talks as much as Derrick so it just seems like she should be older than 15 months.

Derrick loved seeing all the trains.  He says "train" really breathy like, "trayhn."  It's his favorite word and he said it a lot while we were at the park.

One of the cool things about this park is that it's next to a working train yard.  Derrick loved watching the real trains get ready to drive.

Charlotte and Lydia liked looking around the inside of the steam engine.  This engine was really similar to the one on the Polar Express.

There were some other toys a little farther down the sidewalk.  All the kids loved playing with those.

A big train came thundering down the track and so all the kids stopped playing to watch it.

Derrick watched it intently while whispering, "train, train, train."

We walked back down to the play ground and played there for a long time.  The final thing was the tire swing.  All the kids climbed on for a few seconds.

Then we took Veronica off and Brandon pushed the three older kids a lot.

Derrick laughed the whole time. Here's a video that will probably make you dizzy.

When we were done with the park we took the kids to McDonald's for ice cream and fries.  Derrick had the sweetest little smile on his face while he was eating.  I told Brandon, "I think Derrick has just had the greatest two days of his life.  He got toy trains, saw real trains, and now he gets to eat ice cream and fries."

Even though Christmas Day has never felt super-duper amazing to me, I think I succeeded in making it feel that way for my kids - especially Derrick.