Christmas

I am going to go ahead and post pictures first and to those who would like to read on, may. 

 You would never know that this girl is on 4 hours of sleep! She was sick on Christmas Eve, and well enough on Christmas day to enjoy it tremendously

 Skippy John Jones, one of Katie's favorite books

 Don't mind the monster that is me, I was on very little sleep.  

This is when I opened my gift from Jeff.  He contacted Jessica (my cousin, and best friend), who he knew I'd been wanting to see and set up a girls night out (complete with a gift card to Cafe Rio.

 One of Katie's favorite children's books, Marley.  She loves that dog

 Beanie, our sweet doggie slept with Katie while we were there.  I love how attached she is.  It's almost been a year since we got her and... we LOVE owning a dog.  It's been good for our kids.

 Kylee was able to sleep until 7 Christmas morning (she also didn't go to sleep until 2-2:30, but I'm not sure what was going on with her).

 Finally home and able to sleep in our own beds and play in our snow.  We missed the snow while we were in La Verkin

We spent Christmas in La Verkin this year.  I don't know if we will do Christmas day there again because it was a pain to pack the gifts down and bring them back home (we barely fit everything into the car). But we plan on spending time there just before or just after and sleeping in our own beds on Christmas Eve.

Our Elf came with us and of course my girls enjoy looking for him each morning, but my brother-in-law, Jared really loved him.  He once made the comment "I wish that Christmas was in 5 days instead of 3 so the elf could keep coming" :)  It was even more fun with him.  He's a great kid, my girls enjoy him.

Christmas Eve, my favorite day of the year, went really well down there with Jeff's family.  My mother-in-law cooked a wonderful turkey dinner, we played games and had a fun little family program with Jeff's brothers, even Chris and Sheralyn came down and stayed (Katie LOVES her only aunt, you have no idea).

All went well until about 10pm when Katie woke up bawling, struggling to breath and complaining her neck hurt really bad (her throat).  And that was pretty much the rest of the night.  Kylee woke up a lot too.  She also had a little cold but I think most of the waking was due to Katie's crying and just not being in her own bed.  We never really did get a good night's sleep while we were there (4 nights) because Kylee just doesn't sleep well out of her own bed. It's worth it to see Jeff's family, and usually we're able to squeeze in a nap if it is absolutely necessary.  

I got about 2 hours of sleep on Christmas Eve, which still was about 1 hour and 40 mins more than Jeff.  We decided to divide and conquer.  I stayed with Kylee and Jeff "slept" with Katie, who coughed, cried and kicked him from 12 am to 4:30am, when his family gets up to open presents. That is NOT a tradition I have even the most remote desire to continue.  It would just be asking for me, and my little ones to be grouchy all day.  It may work for some families, but not mine.  We don't do well on little sleep (except Jeff who actually does fine except the inevitable head ache that sets in the next day).

Since my kids hadn't really gone down until 2am, I was not thrilled that they still planned on getting up at four but they did and were good to be as quiet as possible so the little ones could sleep a little longer.  Most everyone was really nice about it, well aware that we'd had a rough night (and lets face it, I don't think anyone else got much sleep.  It's hard to sleep through screaming children).  Even 8-year-old Jared willingly put off playing with some noisy toys until the kids woke up.  It's hard to be quiet while opening gifts but they did it, which was really nice because my girls were able to get a little more sleep.

I did have a little moment that morning, as I usually do when I am on no sleep (and the fact that the three days leading up to this I had little sleep didn't help) Jeff is super good with the broken Emily (who thankfully rarely appears unless there is a death, or the first few months after the birth of a child... I am usually not a crier) and was able to cheer me up and the rest of the day went really well.  I am SO grateful for my husband's abilities to make me feel better in any situation. He was the hero of the day.

We weren't planning on leaving until the day after Christmas but we weren't prepared to deal with another sleepless night and we knew a storm would be coming in so we decided to leave a day early.  I was SO glad we did, we actually got a good night's sleep.  We got home about 9pm (an hour after the kids' bedtime).  I got Kylee to bed while Jeff unloaded the car and went to help Katie.  Only to find her toothbrush had been used, she used to bathroom, and had put herself to bed.  She was out like a light and slept well ALL night.  It was wonderful.  I felt like a person again the next day.

My girls night was Thursday and it went really well. It was nice to get out and have some time with Jessica :) I need to venture out more