The 9 Days of Christmas, Part 2
...continued from Part 1 of The 9 Days of Christmas.
My fam stopped by around 2 PM and we all ate our feast together, then opened another round of wonderful, thoughtful gifts.
Following present opening we enjoyed a delicious carrot cake made by Grandma, and then proceeded down to the playroom for the annual breaking of the pinatas (our gifts to my brother and sister).
Much fun was had by all! After that my family departed for CT and we put the girls to bed and crashed.
Virtually nothing happened.
M had a bit of a stomach flu relapse after the rich Christmas dinner. The girls played with their new things most of the day. I only took them out for about an hour to return our library videos, and while we were there we participated in craft time. Other than that M and I traded off taking 4-hour and 2-hour naps, respectively.
This was the day I felt so exhausted and wrote this post.
We had leftover spaghetti for dinner.
In the middle of the night, that spaghetti made a comeback all over L's and C's beds. M, despite still feeling queasy himself, cleaned it all up. In the middle of the night. I didn't even have to get my exhausted butt out of bed. Did I mention he's great? Yeah.
Virtually nothing happened.
The girls played with their new things most of the day.
M and I sat around chatting in our pjs for a good portion of the morning.
I did three loads of laundry and washed all of the dirty linens in hot water.
Although the girls seemed perfectly content to be home playing, I felt like we should be doing something with our vacation time. So I took the older girls to see Frozen while C was napping. L curled up in my lap throughout most of the film and felt slightly feverish, but she kept begging for popcorn so I knew she must have felt a little better.
We had Cheerios for dinner.
Virtually nothing happened.
The girls played with their new things most of the day.
M and I sat around chatting in our pjs for a good portion of the morning.
I woke up thinking we might try to go to church somewhere, seeing as most everybody had eaten their chicken soup with minimal pain and suffering the night before.
The girls woke up hungry. L ate two bowls of Cheerios and C ate three... after which L had a look on her face like this:
C got down from her booster seat, began to cry, climbed into my lap, and... well, let's just say we had a Cheerios reversal.
Into the bath, and plans to go to church were scrapped.
And so... virtually nothing happened for the rest of the day.
Except Daddy took the girls skating for about an hour later in the day, using their new skates from Grandma, while I stayed home with a napping C.
My fam stopped by around 2 PM and we all ate our feast together, then opened another round of wonderful, thoughtful gifts.
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| Handmade pjs for the girls from Aunt Beth |
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| Shark towels from Grandma (modeled expertly by Grandpa) |
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| (No light fixtures were harmed in the breaking of this piñata.) |
Thursday (day after Christmas, the 26th)
Virtually nothing happened.
M had a bit of a stomach flu relapse after the rich Christmas dinner. The girls played with their new things most of the day. I only took them out for about an hour to return our library videos, and while we were there we participated in craft time. Other than that M and I traded off taking 4-hour and 2-hour naps, respectively.
This was the day I felt so exhausted and wrote this post.
We had leftover spaghetti for dinner.
In the middle of the night, that spaghetti made a comeback all over L's and C's beds. M, despite still feeling queasy himself, cleaned it all up. In the middle of the night. I didn't even have to get my exhausted butt out of bed. Did I mention he's great? Yeah.
Friday (day after the day after Christmas, the 27th)
Virtually nothing happened.
The girls played with their new things most of the day.
M and I sat around chatting in our pjs for a good portion of the morning.
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| C playing in the playroom, a big smile on her face, despite having been sick the night before |
Although the girls seemed perfectly content to be home playing, I felt like we should be doing something with our vacation time. So I took the older girls to see Frozen while C was napping. L curled up in my lap throughout most of the film and felt slightly feverish, but she kept begging for popcorn so I knew she must have felt a little better.
We had Cheerios for dinner.
Saturday (the 28th)
Virtually nothing happened.
The girls played with their new things most of the day.
M and I sat around chatting in our pjs for a good portion of the morning.
We talked a bit about things we might do with our (quickly dwindling) vacation time, we talked about ways in which we might most wisely spend our Christmas money, we talked about the Game of Thrones books we're both reading, we did some reminiscing about past times, we talked about future goals and resolutions for the new year.
After nap time we went to BJs Optical where I took advantage of a 40% off glasses sale, and I got a new pair for myself which was sorely needed.
We stopped by Panera on our way home and picked up some chicken noodle soup for dinner.
Sunday (the 29th)
I woke up thinking we might try to go to church somewhere, seeing as most everybody had eaten their chicken soup with minimal pain and suffering the night before.
The girls woke up hungry. L ate two bowls of Cheerios and C ate three... after which L had a look on her face like this:
C got down from her booster seat, began to cry, climbed into my lap, and... well, let's just say we had a Cheerios reversal.
Into the bath, and plans to go to church were scrapped.
And so... virtually nothing happened for the rest of the day.
Except Daddy took the girls skating for about an hour later in the day, using their new skates from Grandma, while I stayed home with a napping C.
Monday (the 30th)
More of nothing.
A friend of M's stopped by our house with his girlfriend for a while and we chatted and got caught up over coffee. The girls played and napped. I had a short, easy run on the treadmill.
We went out for pizza because everyone was actually feeling hungry come supper time (hooray!) We ate small portions, but nonetheless everyone seemed to do much better with real food.
And those were the nine days of Christmas! The End!
"Well, that was boring," I can hear you saying. "Why did you include all of those days where virtually nothing happened?"
Well, because I wanted to record them for myself, and remember how much fun they were.
You see, usually when M takes a vacation from work we try to jam-pack it with all of the home projects and errands that we haven't been able to accomplish because we haven't had the time. Free time comes at a premium for us, so when we do have it, we feel a obligation to make it really useful. Or we feel like we should at least be doing something fantastically fun and entertaining our girls in a major way if we're not being productive.
And so for the first few days of laying low with the stomach flu, I was feeling a bit... well... guilty, I guess I'd call it... because we weren't accomplishing anything during our vacation time (other than resting) or doing lots of crazy fun activities.
But after those first few days, I began to really enjoy doing nothing, and I saw how needed it was. It seemed like every time we were starting to feel like we were recovered and should get back to a more normal schedule, someone else would relapse and force us all back into laying low. It was like a still, small voice just telling us to take the whole week completely off and give up on the idea of accomplishing much. I can't really remember the last time I did that for such a long time.
So that may be the thing that made this Christmas most memorable for me, and I'm really thankful for it. (I'm thankful for the rest, not for the stomach flu, obvi.)
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