Merry Freakin' Christmas

So, in addition to Christmas presents and family memories, this year, we decided to spread the love via shared germs as well - BOTH in the form of the nasty splitting head cold and throwing your guts up stomach flu variety. Sounds fun, right? Super. Our family brought some cold germs, my brother's family brought some cold germs and my mom decided to throw some flu germs on top. The count so far is 4 massive head colds, 4 ear infections and 5 stomach flu survivors (and it's only a starting pool of 6 adults and 3 kids!). It was a regular ole petri dish of holiday fun.

Seriously, the everyone getting sick part wasn't too great, but otherwise, it was a super fun vacation. And I couldn't help but breathe a sigh of relief more than once that Bodie is no longer "interstage" (pre-Glenn) where either a cold or flu would send him to the hospital, or worse. Thankfully, at this point, he's stable enough that other than a ridiculous amount of crankiness, he tends to tolerate illness pretty well. And we snapped a lot of great pics around the swarm of germs...

Our whole family at our traditional Christmas Eve lunch at the Madonna Inn (the best Black Forest cake on the planet!!!)

The kids at the Christmas Eve candlelight service...

This is what my sweet angelic 18 month old nephew Michael did during most of the service. When he did wake up, he sat quietly on my sister-in-law's lap, gently playing with the pretend candles - seriously could not have been cuter...

Meanwhile, this is what my kids did...

notice what they're doing with the "candles"?

Sierra's putting hers in her ear... 

And Bodie's went straight into his mouth, and then, in his ears, up his nose, in his hair and on his head fashioned as horns - honestly, kinda appropriate given how he was behaving! ;-)  

He was also tearing apart all of the paper he could find and screaming "BARBARA! BARBARA!" at my mom's best friend, who he could see singing in the choir at the front of the church (again, thank goodness for only 1 working vocal cord!).  He was such a typical toddler boy - all I could think was how grateful I was that almost everyone in that church had been praying for Bodie for so long that they probably were willing to give him some extra grace when it came to those kind of antics...I hope.

We snapped a pic of the kids after the service. I love this pic because it so captures their personalities perfectly - Sierra, more or less trying to be well behaved, Michael innocently standing there doing what he's supposed to be doing...and then Bodie. Man this kid is a bull in a china shop. Enough said.

A family pic after the service (and no, I have no idea why Sierra is lifting her dress over her head).

Christmas morning. Ear infection had set in pretty bad for Bodie at that point, so he definitely had his crankier moments, but overall, he had A LOT more fun than last year, thankfully! His favorite gift was probably this one - a HUGE Mickey Mouse from my parents (Bodie is obsessed with Mickey Mouse and Elmo these days)... 

He LOVED it. 

 Sierra's favorite present was this doll set - we literally got it for $10 at Walmart on Black Friday. An "older sister" doll and a baby doll. Best $10 we ever spent.

The day after Christmas, we took the kids to the dunes by my parents house - how AWESOME is this??? 

Sierra LOVED it. Just ran and dove everywhere in the sand.

 

And, surprisingly, Bodie really liked it, too.

 Can't you tell? Haha! No really, he did - he was a little apprehensive at first, but once he got used to the colder sand, he took to it, rolling and running everywhere. He's Bodie - and it was a chance to get really really dirty - enough said.

All in all, even with the germs spread around, we had a GREAT Christmas. A wonderful chance to get together with loved ones and celebrate Christ's birth and His love for us. And to revel in the miracle of both of our children as well. Hope you and your family had a blessed Christmas as well!