We had ourselves a nice little Christmas over here and I decided I better write about it before it’s 2016 and all a distant memory. And considering that most days where I put my car keys five minutes earlier counts as a distant memory, I’m sure I’ve already forgotten a few things.
The weekend before Christmas we went to Bryan to visit Honey and Big and go to an Aggie basketball game. We had a great time and got home early Monday afternoon and I immediately made a big grocery store list since we were out of all of our normal stuff along with needing things required for Christmas such as massive amounts of butter and sugar. In fact, by the time I was almost finished at HEB, my cart was so full that it qualified as a menace to fellow shoppers. I could barely navigate it and had various things falling out at every turn.
On Monday evening, Mimi and Bops took Caroline and my niece, Sarah, to the Riverwalk to eat dinner and look at the lights. I would have gone with them but I’d already made an appointment to get my hair colored so I opted for a Christmas with no gray hair over looking at the lights.
The next few days were a haze of baking, cooking, wrapping presents and staying up way too late watching movies. Caroline and I spent almost all day Wednesday making our traditional cinnamon rolls and that’s when it dawned on me that Christmas with a big kid is sorely underrated. There are no tantrums or crashes from sugar highs or red and green sprinkles all over the kitchen floor and instead it’s like you have your very own Keebler elf who knows how to roll out cinnamon roll dough and cover it with butter and sugar and cut it carefully to place in pans.
It’s like a Christmas miracle.
On Christmas Eve we had our very first Community Worship Christmas Eve service and I have to say that it was so great even though I failed to take even one single picture to commemorate the occasion. Afterwards, we went to Mimi and Bops’s house to open presents with my sister and her family and eat tamales.
Another overlooked feature of Christmas with a big kid is that some of them sleep late on Christmas morning as opposed to flying out of their room at 4:30 a.m. and trying to convince you that counts as morning. Caroline slept in until almost 10:00 a.m. and then we drank coffee and ate breakfast as we looked at what Santa had delivered the night before.
Please note that table-top soccer foosball table. That was a last minute addition to Santa’s bag of toys and I hear that it took him over an hour and a half to put together and caused his back to get so stiff that he could hardly stand upright to walk to bed later that night. Bad call, Santa.
Of course he also brought a selfie stick and a bag of photo booth props that we all enjoyed.
Then we opened the rest of our presents.
This was the year we turned the corner from toys to clothes and electronics.
We spent the rest of the day enjoying our time together. Caroline gave me a full makeover that included an unfortunate experiment with liquid eyeliner and sparkly blue eyeshadow. All photographic evidence of this has been destroyed. And, finally, later that evening I decided to at least be productive enough to sweep up all the red glitter that seemed to be multiplying all over our living room floor. We ate gumbo even though it was 75 degrees outside and then watched It’s A Wonderful Life.
I can’t even remember what happened on Saturday because I think I blacked out due to all the sugar and butter and spiced pecans and homemade Chex Mix. True story, I ate enough Chex Mix that it made the inside of my mouth hurt. That’s either a high or a low point.
On Sunday the weather finally cooled off and Caroline was thrilled to get to wear the new fleece her Gigi bought her for Christmas.
Of course I was so saddened about the terrible weather later that night and the horrible devastation in Dallas. Sending so many thoughts and prayers to folks there as they begin to put the pieces back together.
I hope you all had a nice Christmas and are ready for 2016. I’m not even sure yet how 2015 managed to go by so fast, but here we are about to turn the page on a new year. Or swipe to 2016 on the calendar on our phones. Either way, I hope you have a happy one.
**Edited to add that Caroline’s boots are the Sam Edelman Penny boots. You can find them here at Nordstrom.