Twas the Night Before

First of all, Happy New Year! I cannot believe that another year has come and gone.

In my mind I'm repeating, Hallelujah! We made it through another Christmas! I'm so happy that it's all over.

We really did have a great Christmas, but it felt like a complete whirlwind this time around. The fact that I'm just getting around to uploading the bazillion pictures reflects how much we've been juggling over the last month.

The spirit of the season still seeped in here and there, but it definitely wasn't in the quiet moments I envisioned we'd have with our eyes all aglow sitting next to the tree each night. I was reminded that life is not going to miraculously slow down at some magical point.

And even though I have an overwhelming urge to finish up the de-cluttering of our house, put the last of the decorations away, make room for new toys, and produce sparkly clean countertops, I figure I better document a bit of the holidays before the entire month of January passes us by.

We took a quick trip to the desert to spend Christmas with my family. Our Christmas Eve festivities were unconventional as usual, but we clung to those traditions nonetheless.

No Christmas would be complete without transforming my mom's color-coordinated tree into something tacky. The tree has been adorned with a different items throughout the years. We've stayed up late giggling while placing kitchen utensils, balls of yarn, sticky notes, stamp pads, and toys on the tree. This year, we decided on an office supplies theme.

We kicked off Christmas Eve with one of my dad's famous meals and a feature presentation of The Magic Show Extravaganza. Ever since the magician came to Blake's school, he has been begging to do our own magic show. Since my brother and I had a lot of experience producing magic shows in our basement growing up, we were almost semi-professional in our presentation.

Almost.

(Let's just ignore the fact that the lighting wasn't great and these aren't the highest quality photos.)

Blake put a lot of gusto into his tricks.

Abra-cadabra!

Everyone (except the Scrooge, but who could really blame him?) participated in the grand event. My dad made some coins magically disappear in his pocket. Our final trick even featured a disappearing person. The table with the blanket over it helped slightly with that one.

Let's take a closer look at two things that made the magic show especially classy.

1. The gigantic fake fire pixelating on the TV. The crackling noises it produced added a nice touch.

2. The stocking holders.

While we were adorning the tree with staplers and scissors and rolls of tape, the guys rearranged the letters of the stocking holders. 

Extra classy. I can't believe I'm even sharing this with the public.

Originally, the stocking holders read "Joy, Peace, Noel." 

We laughed pretty hard about all of the "special" touches.

Then it was time to open the traditional matching pajamas.

After we changed, the Scrooge (aka Troy) pointed out, "The magic show was nothing. I'm about to do the strangest thing I do all year." The final gift of each Christmas Eve contains rolls of toilet paper and individual kazoos.

The tradition dates back years and years, but let's just say it involves a parade and the humming of "Stars and Stripes Forever" and leave it at that.

I think the Scrooge secretly likes our fun family festivities.

And one thing is for sure, the boys love these traditions. They are going to grow up thinking that these things are completely normal.

Then it was off to bed while visions of sugarplums danced in their heads.

Christmas in the Desert

I did not miss having a white Christmas one bit! It was so nice to talk a walk around the neighborhood on Christmas Day without putting on boots and scarves. I think I'd settle for palm trees and the Arizona desert every year.

Our Christmas celebrations started with watching my parents play the Christmas Eve church prelude music on recorder and cello. Blake clapped exuberantly after each song, and was content until he found the Toys for Tots pile of toys in the foyer. How do you explain that the toys are being saved for the less fortunate to a two-year-old with googly eyes? We came home and unwrapped our traditional matching pajama pants, read "Twas the Night Before Christmas," and played a few games which are too embarrassing to reveal. I will say that our annual Christmas march around the house put Blake into hysterics, as did quickly passing presents around in a circle. Another Christmas tradition that my brother and I kept up this year was hanging odd items on the beautifully decorated tree. In the past we have adorned my mom's perfectly color-coordinated tree with items such as kitchen utensils, yarn, sticky notes, and stamp pads. This year, we threw all of Blake's blocks and small toys onto the tree. In the end, the tree didn't even look that tacky which was our original aim. It just looked very bright with primary colors.

Blake was such a delight on Christmas morning. We ate a big breakfast before tackling the piles and piles of presents. Blake was really shoveling in the food and asking for seconds, thirds, and fourths, until we asked him if he wanted to open presents. He immediately ripped off his bib and exclaimed "All Done!" He not only unwrapped his huge stack of presents, but most of our gifts as well. His birthday was great practice for this grand event because once he got started he wanted to tear off every last shred of wrapping paper! It took us 3 long hours to get through the unwrapping. I don't know how we are going to fit everything in the car to bring back home, but we are sure enjoying our presents!

I had some time on my hands so instead of posting a plethora of pictures and video clips, I combined them all into "Our Christmas in Two Minutes."

Christmas #1

One of the fun parts about being married is that you get to celebrate Christmas twice. Our first Christmas celebration was from my side of the family, and we will have Christmas #2 with Troy's side on Christmas day. We opened presents from my family a little early to spread out the festivities and not completely overwhelm Blake on Christmas day.

My mom got Blake the same B'Jolly outfit that he had last year, only in a 12 mos. size instead of a newborn size. Here he is on his first Christmas, only a few weeks old, and on his second Christmas, one year later.

Our tree and our little elf.

Blake is fascinated with the ornaments. In fact, he likes to take them off the tree and put them in his ball popper. Luckily, they are light enough to not get stuck in the ball popper.

He also is mesmerized with our Santa countdown calendar. He whines all day long to be picked up so he can ring Santa's bell and feel his beard.

Blake is checking out those elf feet. He is not happy that he cannot pull them off.

One of Blake's favorite presents is a little electronic keyboard. In this picture, he is pressing the yellow button. This is not surprising because it is the only button he ever pushes. The buttons play different clips of pop music, so, we hear "Wide Open Spaces" by the Dixie Chicks about one hundred times a day.

It is a tradition in our family to give some prank gifts. I have always wrapped the presents that my dad gave to my mom, and one year, my dad told me that all of her presents were in the trunk of his car. Not only did I wrap the presents I found in the trunk, but I wrapped the "junk from the trunk" as well. Empty talk tape cases, paper towel rolls, jumper cables, half-empty nut containers, etc. So now, it is a tradition to give "junk from the trunk" presents.

I felt bad this week as all of our neighbors were snow blowing their driveways and Troy was shoveling with the shovel we bought at a neighbor's garage sale for one dollar. So, I made him a "power shovel," my own rendtion of "junk from the trunk." He came home from work and immediately changed to go out and shovel, and I said, "You're not going to be able to do that right now." He eventually noticed the very "discreetly" wrapped shovel under the tree. I had duct taped an extension cord on to the shovel to make it a "power shovel."

And, just in case the electricity went out, I included this back-up generator. I'm not sure if Troy was too amused, but I sure had fun wrapping up the prank gift!

This was actually a birthday gift but Blake loves his truck!

He pushes it around the house, but often gets stuck when he runs into things. He hasn't figured out how to turn it around yet.

Merry Christmas #1, and thank you to my family for the wonderful gifts!