Someone on Facebook had a status that said "364 more days until Christmas". I wanted to throttle them. I need all 364 days to recover from Christmas Day. We finally got smart this year. Usually, we rush through Christmas Day with sheer madness and end up exhausted and cranky by 5:00 pm. Not this year! We decided as a family, to celebrate Christmas with my sister and her 3 kids early (Sunday). We celebrated Christmas Eve with my husband's mother & step father. We let the kids open all their presents (minus the two special ones) after dinner. We saved stockings for Christmas morning before we headed up to my parent's for breakfast and opening the rest of the presents. Even still, I'm exhausted. I think spreading Christmas festivities over 3 days is almost more exhausting than cramming them all into 1 day. I'd love to know how my parent's did it with all 4 of us.
As a child, we'd do Christmas Eve service with my Mimi & PopPop and head home. Mom would let us open one present before bed (brand new matching pajamas) and we'd climb into bed (much too excited to sleep) only to wake up at 6:00 am Christmas morning. I'm pretty sure I was the one waking everyone up excitedly whispering "wake up, wake up, it's Christmas!!!". My poor parents. They'd let us open stockings while they exhaustedly sipped their first cup of coffee. We'd eat cinnamon rolls and grapefruit after and then open the rest of our presents. We'd spend some time in our pajamas, admiring all our new stuff. After which, we'd head to Altamont for Christmas dinner with MiMi & PopPop and for more presents. I don't think we'd ever be home before 8.
I'm sure we'll tweak our plans again next year. I just need another 364 days to get ready.
I miss the old-time Christmases at Mimi and PopPop's... And Mimi, of course. AND, I even miss the matching PJs. Remember when we were up at 4am one year (was it on Lydius?) and the four of us were singing around the Christmas tree? Mom and Dad were SO annoyed! ;) Good times!
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