Christmas Parts Two, Three, Four and Five or Is It Over Yet?

Christmas is not just a day in our family. Christmas is a stream of days marked by a gluttony of food, drink and presents.

We continued our Christmas celebration on Christmas Eve morning with Chris's parents and brother. The boys were on overdrive, awed at the amount of toys infiltrating our home. We just managed to organize the bounty of toys and gifts, clean up the wrapping paper and minimize the chaos, when it was time to set off for Christmas Eve dinner at my grandparents' house.

There are no words to describe how much I love Christmas Eve dinner. It is, simply put, my most favorite and special day of the year. All the people I love most gathered in one place to eat, to drink and to enjoy each other. My grandmother dishes out an Italian feast of epic proportions: homemade sauce and pasta, meatballs, braciole and veal - it is a meal a cut above all other feasts. We drink much wine. My aunt mans the bar and tempts us with her artfully made cosmos. The kids run wild - the older children watching out for and playing with the younger ones.

We stayed at Christmas Eve well past the kiddie's bedtimes, relaxed from the wine and conversation, giggling over the antics of the kids. The chaos was unbelievable, but also captivating. My cousins set up a skeet shooting game in the kitchen and practiced shooting targets in between the stream of family stealing dessert. The older kids challenged each other to Wii games of tennis and bowling in my grandparent's bedroom. ( I think Aidan reigned as champion - beating both Uncle Travis and Uncle Seth!) My grandfather engaged in a fake snowball war with Brennan - conjuring snowballs out of scraps of wrapping paper littering the living room floor.

I next see Brennan wrestling on the couch with his Uncle Seth while Aidan buried himself under mounds of discarded wrapping paper next to the Christmas tree.

Griffin refused to miss even one minute of fun and protested our attempts to put him to sleep in an empty bedroom in his pack n' play. Instead, he stayed up with the big kids and entertained Jenna, Aunt Tennille and Aunt Linda with his artfully worn beret, a gift to Tennille, just unwrapped.


We oohed and ahhed over everyone's presents. As tradition goes, the kids all put on their pjs and cavorted around the house strung out on too much sugar. We finally had to call it a day at 10 p.m., well past the normal 7 p.m bedtime. Of course, we were the first of my family to leave. They would be at the revelry for hours.

I thought the late night would guarantee the boys would sleep in a bit for Christmas morning. I was wrong. 7:01 a.m: Aidan jumped into our bed, eager to see the Santa bounty. The presents were opened and the stockings dumped out in glee. When the dust settled, Chris was put to work, assembling and constructing in a frenzy. (I am grateful I possess zero skills in this area. I can barely make a lego house, let alone a lego star wars naboo command fighter.)



After a relaxing day of play in our pjs, we enjoyed Christmas dinner at my Aunt's. The boys were back in heaven, chasing cousins and uncles, in a frantic, sleep deprived state.

And now it's over. Christmas 2007 in all its glory.