Christmas Eve

This year was definitely an unconventional Christmas Eve. We spent most of the day getting ready for Santa by cleaning the house. It was rainy and pretty gloomy outside so the kids had to play indoors which always makes cleaning harder.

We had arranged with some friends to either have dinner together Christmas Eve or Christmas Day and we all decided that the eve of Christmas is too hectic to try to whip dinner together as well. So Chase and I, for the first time, were to have dinner on our own with no Grandma Beth party or Etherington candlelight dinner. It was a little depressing but not as depressing as traveling to Utah for the holidays where it's FREEZING!!

We made plans to head downtown to see the train display and get some Chinese take out for dinner (I wasn't about to cook an entire ham for just the two of us...the kids don't count). Little did we know our plans would be completely shot!! The train display was totally closed down (perhaps we were misinformed:-). The kids were pretty upset because it was the first thing we had done all day that was supposed to be fun (other than Chase calling me while at the grocery store asking for "Mrs. Claus". Talk about pressure!! I tried my best to sound as much like NPR's Diane Rehm as possible). Instead we drove to Amy's ice cream (the only place we could find open) for a little treat.

While sitting there with our ice cream we were hit with the fact that it might be hard to find a place open on Christmas Eve for dinner. Austin was practically a ghost town and after driving around and calling any and every restaurant we could think of, we realized that at 6 p.m. we would be lucky to find a grocery store open, let alone a restaurant. Eventually we drove by Panda Express (i.e. vomit inducing Chinese food) and realized they were our last hope. After finding Pei Wei, PF Changs and our favorite Indian restaurant Tarka to be closed it was definitely a last resort option. The food was disgusting (even though at the time Chase and I both reassured each other it was "decent") but we were overjoyed when the kids TOTALLY gobbled it up. Christmas miracle!!
When I was little I used to look forward to the opening of one gift so much it was absolutely unbearable to wait through dinner, dessert, carols at the piano, and some Christmas books. In fact, there's a pretty funny picture of my mom reading to us four kids with this sweet enthusiastic look on her face while the rest of us look as though we are being tortured. Funny enough, I now put my kids through the same agony. I now see that my parents were simply trying to fill our hearts with some Christmas spirit. Now I get it!!
Sadie and Jack made it through the anguish of patience and were finally allowed to open one gift. Sadie chose Pops and CC's gift so Jack did the same. Lets just say that we wished they had picked something a little less exciting because it took us until 10 p.m. to get them to bed that night. Their new toys were just too amazing to put down!!

After we got them in bed Chase and I sat down and watched Love Actually (all the gifts had been previously wrapped a few days before...we like to be prepared:-) It took us about 10 minutes to play Santa and then it was off to bed. Unconventional, but wonderful just being with my little family and my best friend Chase. Merry Christmas!!