the 12 days of christmas

So finally the Holidays are over, and although I look forward to them so much every year I am equally glad when they are done and life can return to normal. We had a lot of fun with the kids the week before Christmas came, and then the kid shuffle began. Since it was not our year to have the older kids and it was going into a weekend that was not our weekend I had to get creative with Zach's gifts. We made a big deal the night before Christmas Eve and made cookies for Santa and left him a note from the kids. He brought all of Zach's presents to open the morning of Christmas Eve. Rylee was going to be at our house for a couple hours Christmas morning so we knew that Santa could come for her on Christmas morning. Zach was thrilled with all his presents, and although I did not plan it to happen this way he opened to two things he wanted most, Buzz Lightyear and Woody, last.

We also let the kids open their gifts from us, and Gary's parents came over so they could see the kids open their gifts as well since this would be the last time we would all be together for Christmas. Brienna got her first ride on toy, and was fascinated by it!

That night we met my family for dinner at Biaggi's. It was nice, a lot of food, wine, and typical Nixon family antics. All of my brother's kids were excited to go home and get ready for presents in the morning. Christmas is a lot different for Gary & I on these years when we don't have the kids on Christmas morning. The holidays are really the only time that it truely sucks being divorced with all the schedules to keep track of, not to mention trying to not duplicate gifts

which is hard to do at this age since they tell everyone that they want the same things.

Although this year we were thankful most for Brienna. We enjoying having the family together as much as possible, but it is nice to give her special time with out the chaos. We decided to put together a good portion of her presents since they had more effect on her put together then looking at a box. We took her downstairs in the morning and she immediately went to her Fisher Price house and was so excited she bounced up and down when she stood up next to it. It was so cute!!! We picked up Rylee around 9am and brought her to the house to open her Santa gifts. That was a pretty ridiculous display. Everything she opened she looked at and threw to the side to get to the next one. We made sure that we got her everything that she told us she wanted, except for the Nintendo DS because we didn't want to spend that kind of money of each of them this year because of course we would have had to buy one for each. It became very obvious when she was done and said "is that it?" that she is very centered around presents at this time of year. All she talked about was the pile of presents she was going to have at her "Nonie's"house and asked when her mom was going to come get her. It was very sad for Gary, he was very disappointed that she was not more grateful for all her gifts.

The evening of Christmas day we had Gary parents over and had a nice time relaxing and watching old Christmas movies on TV. Then we had my family back over on Sunday to exchange gifts. Since we didn't have the older two on Christmas Eve we all decided to wait so that everyone could be there when we exchanged gifts.

All in all it was a terrific Christmas. Of course it was memorable because it was Brienna's first, but every year that the kids are another year older the more fun it gets as they play along with all of the fantasy of Christmas!