Christmas 2013

Good a Christmas as any.

We spent the weekend before Christmas in Richfield at De's house with the Burton clan. We played in the snow, made gingerbread (graham cracker) houses, ate food, sat in the hot tub, played games, and stayed up most nights with Dax (who threw up post-cough so many times it's a miracle none of it got the carpet). Dax was terrible. We didn't get enough time with those people.

We stayed Friday night to Monday night, making it home just in time for Christmas Eve Tuesday for me to get all of my wrapping done and loose ends tied. This was our second year running doing our own Christmas morning with our kids, and I just love it. It's small and relatively quiet and not a bit over the top. Unfortunately, Paige caught the sick bug and was so miserable all Christmas Eve and she was puking early Christmas morning, but she seemed fine while we opened presents.

The rest of Christmas break is a blur of lazily hanging out with Matt and Natalie, who were in town from Virginia. We ate lots of food and played lots of games, staying up too late every night doing both of those things. I honestly can't remember any specific activities, besides going to Springdale to play sand volleyball on New Year's Day.

And here we are, plowing through January like the magic of the season never happened. I'm usually quite grumpy about January, but this one has been downright lovely. I'm hoping to pin down some thoughts that have been fluttering through my head as far as resolutions are concerned. The difference for me this year with my goal-setting comes as a desire to do things with less limitations. For example, I'm not going to drink so much soda. No hard-and-fast rule; I'm just going to drink it less. Since New Year's Eve, I've had a couple of sips of Leif's soda when he has it, but that's it. I seem to feel more control this way, like, I could choose to have soda today because there's no strict resolution keeping me from doing so, but I'm choosing not to. I think I like it this way.

I am going to set a goal for next week, though: Take the Christmas lights off the house before week's end. 

Apparently Bey Blades are cool. Funny story about the giant yellow shirt: I got him a Grinch shirt as his Christmas Eve pajama gift, to go with his pajama pants, but when he opened it, he said, "But Mom! The Grinch is like the bad guy of Christmas!" and refused to wear it. So this shirt is on loan from Grandpa Clair's closet. He was so happy to put it on, he just started doing karate moves all over the place.

This girl LOVES the new Disney movie Frozen. I wish I had gotten her the character dolls.

She got him gloves and a beanie.

Cuteness, right?

He got several trains, and they were/are very much the favorite. He played here most of the morning. Gavin was the same way with trains.

The obligatory family photo

He got work tools and gear from Grandma and Grandpa Burton. Every time we go to the new house now he grabs his tools.