We had ourselves a merry little Christmas

Aghh....time to sit and relax. This week has been a busy but fun one. Now we are just enjoying the quieter moments by ourselves as a family.

We spent the 24th at church in the morning and then we went over to my mom's for a lighter lunch. We didn't end up going to a Christmas eve candelight service in the evening which was kind of different for me. They did one at the Sunday morning service (we have 3 services and they didn't want to do 3 more in the evening). But in the evening we went over to our good friends, Pancho and Melissa, that moved here from Panama to spend Christmas eve with them and their family.

We did sort of a traditional 'Panamanian' Christmas eve. Normally, they go to mass at around 10 pm and then head home to open gifts at midnight (if they don't have kiddies that believe in santa still!) and then they partake in a HUGE x-mas dinner after that at 12 a.m. or 1:00 a.m....ham, turkey - the works!! Since my dad doesn't usually stay up that late we did dinner at around 8:30 and visited the rest of the evening. My parents left at around 11 pm and we stayed till about 1:30.

Christmas morning we opened a few gifts with Katie at our house and had a relaxing morning with a late breakfast just the 3 of us. We headed over to my mom's after lunch and spent the day playing games, talking, eating good food, and watching a movie. Of course Katie got to open her gifts from Jose and I and from grandpa and grandma.

She liked the Cabbage patch kid baby (they still smell just like when I got mine when I was little- like baby powder!)....she liked her new piano (to play alongside grandma at her real big one).....

But her favorite gift was by far the walker/ride-on from grandpa and grandma...the smiles and giggles were endless!


It was a nice relaxing day with my parents and brother. Again it was late and we didn't get to bed until around 1:30 a.m.

Jose was up at the crack of dawn on boxing day to go to Best Buy for the door crasher sales for a new flat screen TV. It's not his BIG big-screen T.V....'medium size' as he says. Maybe next year when they come down more in price but for now he is happy with a 37".

He got there at 5:15 a.m. and stood in the cold for 45 minutes till the doors opened behind abut 200 people who had beat him there! Craziness! And i was snug as a bug at home in bed! That same day we went over to my mom's for our actual Christmas turkey dinner with the whole family. Everyone was to be there except my sister Christine who had to work Christmas day but they surprised everyone to drive down that day to be part of the evening! We ate lots of good food (the most important part was the stuffing!), played games, visited and had our gift exchange. It was a great evening.

Again we headed over to my mom's on the 27th for brunch in the morning and spent the day again with the family doing pretty much the same thing- eating, visiting, games, etc. It was a late night once again and so on the 28th it was good to be home- Katie was so off her normal routine that by Thursday she was getting a little grumpy. So slowly we are getting her back to her schedule.

Now that the dust has settled a bit I am feeling like I've had enough of Christmas. Don't get me wrong, it was great. But seeing signs everywhere for boxing week sales, christmas music playing...I'm about ready to be done with it all already for some reason. It's funny because I was into Christmas way earlier this year and now I'm ready to be done with it earlier too. I'll keep my tree up though till Tuesday or maybe Wednesday and then it's time to pack up the decorations and enjoy the new year.

Hope everyone enjoyed their Christmas season as much as we did this year!