A Belated Merry Christmas

Belated Merry Christmas to all! (Light blogging due to family being in town.)

We had a WONDERFUL Christmas! Mom and Dad arrived on Thursday and all went well at the airport. DH picked up the kids and we all went out to dinner at a fun family restaurant in Springfield VA called Paradiso. They have a kids room where all the children eat dinner at picnic tables and watch a movie while the adults eat in the family room outside, with a big window between the two rooms. A nice way to catch up with adults and for the children to have fun, too.

On Friday, DH went to work while the rest of us went to the Tysons mall. We had lunch and then headed home for gift wrapping. We picked up some pizza for dinner and watched The Polar Express for family movie night.

On Saturday, my parents stayed home to wrap presents while the rest of us made our mad dash run to Wegmans for groceries and to pick up our holiday ham. Then I took my parents out with the kids for lunch at Chicken Out before heading to Lady Bird Johnson Park to see water-skiing Santa. We caught a very very short glimpse of Santa -- better to see him on the web site! Well, the excitement must have caught up with Nicholas, because he fell asleep on the way home and slept...and slept...and slept...right through to our planned departure time for church at 3 pm. So we stretched it until 3:30 pm. Then 4:00 pm. Then 4:30 pm. Then we decided to skip it altogether. Saturday night was dinner at Silverado early (5:20 pm) and then putting out presents under the tree.

Sunday morning was an EARLY awakening by my daughter with the announcement that Santa had brought things in addition to the presents we had put under the tree for each other -- and she asked permission to go downstairs to look. (We have a split level house so she can see from the stairs but not REALLY see from so far away.) She found a rocking horse, a Cinderella doll set, an Alice in Wonderland dress, a box of Princess wigs, and a turtle suitcase. Her brother found a Plasmacar, a GeoTrax airport, a GeoTrax fire and rescue station, GeoTrax rescue equipment, and a turtle suitcase just like his sister's. We spent the morning opening up presents, and then DH cooked up an awesome breakfast -- Baked French Toast with strawberry and blueberry sauce. YUM! We were so full from breakfast that Christmas lunch got shifted to Christmas dinner. As my Mom said later, it was a very "old fashioned" Christmas -- lots of fun watching the kids and no stress.

Monday we were silly enough to go back out shopping at Tysons. Picked up a few things on sale, but were not so silly to be at the Nordstrom men's sale at 7 am -- a 10 am arrival was fine with us. We picked up lunch at zpizza -- it was a different spot to try, but I wasn't "wowed" by it. I tried to finish up laundry -- I had somehow managed doing 13 loads of laundry on Christmas day, mostly for all the new clothes the children now had. Both children were pretty tired so they napped in the afternoon. We went to dinner again at Paradiso -- my parents are Italian food fans so it is an easy choice -- and called it a night early.

On Tuesday, DH went into work and we got the luggage loaded into the car and headed first to Pentagon City mall ("The Fashion Centre at Pentagon City"). My dad was looking for a store that used to be there called The Impostors Faux Jewelry -- but it wasn't there any longer. (I hardly ever go to that mall any more because the stores I shop at are not there, so I had no idea.) We picked up a few things on sale and then readied to do our airport drop-off. Of course there flight was very delayed -- as in 2 hours later arriving from Nassau, Bahamas. The airline did not tell them much, either -- even changed their gate on them and made no announcement. But they made it home finally, and received a phone call at home from US Airways "apologizing for the inconvenience". How nice. While they were at the airport, DH and I were organizing closets for donations to charity. Not sure how many bags of clothes we ended up with -- maybe 7?

Yesterday was back-to-work day for me and DH's day off. He did the bags of clothing drop off and ran some other errands. With Congress being out for the entire month of January, here's hoping he has a reduced hours schedule then, too -- sure helps to get errands done and makes up a little for the very long hours he puts in when Congress is in town.

All in all, a fun Christmas. I think about some friends and family that are not here this Christmas and I hug my children a little tighter. I'm glad that my parents got to spend some good time with the children, too.