Twas the Night Before Christmas...

...and the night before that. These were really difficult days, but I still tried to enjoy the moments the best I could. I had a 101-103 fever the entire time and was trying to take care of Preston and his bad case of croup during it all. You should have seen me....sweats, hair pulled back, no shower all day, flushed fever-ridden cheeks...I was a DISASTER! Oh well, that's just how it goes sometimes.

David and Anthony came by to drop off gifts for the boys. Marcos went with David to drop off his car. We had borrowed one of their cars since ours was in the shop after Marcos slid off the road in the snowstorm. Yeah...good times! :P It was all I could do to get through the night. I felt HORRIBLE! The past several years I have made a video for David, but I didn't have nearly as many pictures this year since Anthony is now in school full time. I settled for a small photo album I made online. Kind of lame, but what do you do? And...what do you get for the kid who has everything? We found an affordable gift that I thought would still be cool and fun. It was a game of catch with little balls that you shut the mitts and then open them to release and launch the ball. Good enough. I hate always being on the receiving end of generous gifts. Preston got a Thomas set and Dylan got Star Wars legos. They were in heaven!

Our home teacher asked us if we would like a visit from Santa. He came two nights before Christmas. He talked about the true meaning of Christmas and gave the kids a present to open. They got Christmas coloring books from Santa. I could tell Dylan was skeptical. He told me after that he had a guess about that Santa. He said he thought it was Brother Behunin and told me that his voice was different than the Santa on the Polar Express. I told him that Santa is really busy and needs lots of helpers at Christmas time. With surprise in my eyes, I said, "Maybe people we know were asked to be Santa's helpers this year." He really wants to believe, but is starting to wonder and question quite a bit. Preston, on the other hand, is just barely figuring this whole Santa thing out. He was excited to have him there and just watched him the whole time. After Santa left, he walked around saying, "ho ho ho" in a very excited tone. :)

Christmas Eve. We stayed home since I still wasn't feeling well. It was all I could do to wrap presents and prepare that day. We even skipped making cookies for Santa and settled for setting out cookies one of the neighbors had brought to us that day. Dylan wrote a note to Santa and was more concerned with asking him if he gets along with Snowman than anything else. He watched the show "Santa Verses Snowman" and was pretty upset that the two of them would fight. He's funny! The kids opened their new pajamas, we read the Christmas story from the bible, put the kids to bed by 9 and tried to get everything done early so I could get some rest. It really was a rough year physically and emotionally for me!