What a wonderful day to celebrate the birth Jesus, our Savior. We slept the latest of any Christmas day I remember (even when I was little).

Mark tried to get the kids up by “Ho, Ho, Ho” but we found out later, Zoe just cringed and hid under her blankets. Oh well, we’ll try next year.

The kids didn’t get up until 7 and then we headed in the living room to see if Santa brought anything. He did…thankfully, he didn’t have to stay up too late putting it all together.

Zoe got an art easel.
Ace got a red bike with a Spider man helmet (he needed specifics, and then he decided for the longest time today that he wasn’t going to ride it because he’d fall…he rode it and didn’t fall…thanks to training wheels).
Liam got a Thomas train and small train set (Santa ditched the train tracks that had been passed down from a previous owner of the train table we have and replaced them with a simpler one with instructions, oh yeah!).
Josiah got a small activity cube (that we, delightfully, realized lights up).

Other gifts included educational and fun toys and videos to watch.

After opening gifts, we concluded our morning festivities with a hot breakfast that included the all-time famous tradition of Hot Fruit Compote and biscuits. This was passed down from my mom who got it from her sister-in-law (thanks, Aunt Diane, the tradition lives on).

After the adults got showers, we headed over to Ronald McDonald house to drop off our gifts. That being done, we then searched for a grocery store to purchase some things needed to make Friendship bread (my mom got a starter and she didn’t want to finish it so she passed it on to me). Did you know there are no grocery stores open in our town on Christmas day? Not even Wal-Mart. Oh well.

Got home, ate lunch, and Mark took the kids out to ride bikes while I made Merry Kiss-Mouse Pie and the Friendship bread (yummy is all I gots to say). We piddled the rest of the day and played with the kids and now their asleep so we’re rounding out the night with a movie!

Zoe had major meltdown from exhaustion about the time we were trying to finish up our “What God Wants for Christmas” and our advent calendar. We managed to survive and get to bed without any major incidences.

Merry Christmas! I pray everyone celebrated the birthday of Christ with Him in mind! Pictures to come later.

Two huge suitcases full of dirty clothes (would’ve been more if I hadn’t forgotten to pack a couple pairs of undies for a few of us and we washed a load at my mom’s).
Four (I couldn’t thing of a three) extremely tired preschoolers (they were asleep by 7:30 last night).
Five nights of go, go, going here there and everywhere
Equals a night back at home.

We logged over 1000 miles traveling from here to Alabama to another part of Alabama to Georgia, to another part of Georgia and back to the first Georgia and then home. By Monday morning, we were sooooo ready to be out of the car.

The kids had a wonderful time and after our first night of no sleep, we actually had a “silent night.” Multiple ones in fact. The only other sleepless night was on Sunday night when Josiah got over tired and it got really cold in our room.

Josiah and Liam had fevers on Thursday but by Friday were feverless (yippee for breastfeeding). They both have very yucky colds but we used a vapor rub on toes and a humidifier and it’s been working well.

We enjoyed seeing all of our family but are all extremely grateful to be home.

Okay, so if you’re a new reader because you received my Christmas card, let me know by dropping a comment! Happy reading about our crew.

Yes, yes, pictures will be up this week just as soon as I…
finish plotting and planning grocery lists for the new year (I do three menus and rotate them out) and month.
getting ready for not one but two birthday parties (my babies are growing up)
and cleaning the house for end of Christmas season/birthday parties (see above)
all while juggling the adventures (and sometimes “mis” adventures) of our lovely clan of kids.