christmas wrap-up

This morning was a beautiful, noisy chaos. Shreds of colored paper littered the floor. The whistling and rumbling of Pirate's new Christmas train. The one that was going to be a decoration-only, but he was far too excited about. Pirate kept busy all day playing with his new toys, but mostly that train. He also got an easel/desk with some new watercolors, pencils, crayons, and stickers. My fridge is now covered in Pirate's art work. We FaceTimed with the family, and ate a lot of sugary junk that can really only be justified on Christmas day. Including Cocoa Puffs that came wrapped in Christmas paper and said, "To: Will, Love: Great-great-grandma Ferrin." I think it's safe to say it was a magical kind of day. One that will go down in time as a memorable Christmas. 

A fabulous day at the end of a lovely, long weekend. Friday I moped around the house because it looked like an enormous freezing-rain/ice storm was going to wreck all our Christmas travel plans. Then, miraculously, Saturday morning there was about a 6 hour break in the storm and that was just enough time for us to load our car and head up to my BIL and SIL's house.

I know I've mentioned before, but it is so nice to be this close to family. The kids disappear into the basement and we hear eruptions of laughter from time to time, and that's about how well they play together. The weekend highlights include: a pizza night, lots and lots and lots of snow (enough to build a mini-sled hill in the front yard, and enough to cancel church), game nights after the kids went to bed (Hubs won Monopoly again), making sugar-cone Christmas trees, going to look at Christmas lights, a special indoor kids' play place, and for the girls only: Cheesecake Factory followed by mani-pedis. So much fun!