Christmas 2013

The thing about having an awesome job in nursing is that you get a lot of regular old weekdays off. Which is thoroughly enjoyable for a person like me who would rather go to the zoo in the bitter cold of January on a Wednesday and have the whole place to myself with no special programs, shows, or animals than go in July with all the cool stuff and all the people too.

Anyway, this year Josh had to work a full day on Christmas Day, so back in November he asked the person who was working Christmas Eve if she wanted to do half days of both with him so they could be be around for stuff with their families on both days and she was all for it.

But then just before Thanksgiving another lady he works with asked him if he could cover for her Christmas Eve afternoon so she could leave earlier in the day to drive to CA to see her kids. She's a single mom, and her working in the afternoon would mean she'd leave Utah at 7pm and drive all night to be there for Christmas morning - or miss it. Of course he said yes.

So he wound up working most of Christmas Eve and Christmas Morning. Which is why our Christmas Day pictures (which number a grand total of 30) were taken at 2pm and they have pictures of a progressively drooping (and eventually sleeping) dad in the background.

He was totally exhausted, but the boys were happy to slowly open their presents and lick a bit of every dang piece of candy the dumbest (and most panicked) Santa in the world gave them.

They both got new colored pencils and notebooks for the car. Tommy has finally taken up coloring (thank you Preschool!) and John is following because if there's one thing these boys love, it's doing the same thing.

Tommy got Magnetix. Santa is stupid. It boasts on the box "108 pieces!" and Santa thought "he'll think it's so cool to build stuff with these tiny magnetic pieces!" But that was false. What is fun is taking all of these pieces out of the box and making the "longest pewer (gun. cuz guns say "pew!") ever." And then stringing that pewer out in the middle of the floor. On the other hand, Tommy is happy. So Santa is a little smart.

They were just so happy to *finally* open their presents, and Josh was so excited, and every new present was exciting and fun and very very interesting.

After slowly opening presents and John taking a nap while Tommy touched EVERYthing, we left the mess in the living room and went to visit the grandmas. Which was (as always) a lovely time. 

We stopped at Grandma Egbert's and exchanged gifts and did puzzles and looked at her amazing Christmas village. The boys had a blast. 

Then we went to Grandma Reilley's and exchanged gifts and ate food and sat around talking and playing withe gifts until well past bedtime. We all had a beautiful time. 

The boys were especially excited about the marble run that Grandma Reilley gave them. 

We set it up and ran it over and over again. Now it's part of our morning routine, wake up, dump out the marble run pieces and start whacking each other with "the longest pewer ever" then run as many marbles as we can find (2 or 3 usually...we need more marbles) down it until "pewering" sounds more fun again.

Oddly, Josh working made our holiday even better than normal. It was mellow, and slow and calm and relaxed. We were excited longer than normal, and we had a beautiful time.

I got family pictures from the fabulous Tracy Layne and Josh got a Kindle Fire. Both things we've wanted for a long time and have been saving for, and it just so happened that we found great deals in time for Christmas that lined up with our saved cash.

Josh's only surprise was a cooshy (but wildly unattractive) bath mat because we'd been using an old towel on the floor since we moved in. Though it sounds like a super lame gift, this was my embracing his cooshiness. Letting him be him.

By far the best part of Christmas for me was opening a gift from Josh. He wrote a letter that I'll save for the rest of my life and read often.

And of course, because I know you're dying to know, the boys both got flashlights. And spare batteries. But not too many spare batteries because batteries are stupid-expensive. I think next year they'll get crank flashlights and can fuel them with their own power.