Not so Silent Night

So, we had a great Christmas Eve spent with friends and tons of food. We got home and managed to get the girls in bed. Thank heavens they had run themselves out at dinner and by the time I checked on them at 9:30pm they were out cold. So was their dad. Seriously. He was snoring by 9:30pm! This left me to get Christmas all together by myself. I turned on It's a Wonderful Life. Did you know the running time on that movie is only 2 hours 9 minutes. Half of the time I don't watch it on TV is that I don't want to commit 3 and a half hours of my life to watching one movie. Maybe I should just break down and buy the movie and that way I won't have to be stuck.

So I kept sneaking out of my room and stacking presents by the tree. Is there really anything more cheerful than a Christmas tree with presents under it? Now that they are all gone I want to take the tree down because it looks a bit sad. Then I did the stockings and managed to turn off the lights before 11pm. Unfortunately, Christmas is apparently some sort of different holiday here in Texas because at 12:06am I awoke to the sound of fire crackers. Like the kind that Kevin lights at the back door in Home Alone. I was so exhausted that I couldn't get out of bed and yell out the window what exactly our neighbor could do with his noisemakers. He lit several strings and I am not sure if he stopped or I just passed out again. What a moron. Maybe I should print out the lyrics to Silent Night, underline a few passages and tape it to his front door.

Fiona told me that she and Buttercup woke up at 1am and didn't go back to sleep. We told them they weren't allowed to get up until 6:30am, our normal wake up time. But I kept hearing stuff through my sleep and finally I got up at 6:15am. I swear I get less sleep Christmas Eve as a mom than I did as a kid and I start out fully prepared, nothing to assemble, nothing to wrap. I slap a few bows on a some presents and that's it.

The girls had a wonderful Christmas. There were so many great deals close to the end of the year I think I am going to start a special fund for those things. Of course, I think it helped that retailers were so desperate this year.
Buttercup made out in the clothes department. What really happened is that I managed to find some good deals, mostly at Old Navy, and used that chance to resupply her wardrobe. Poor girl, she grew several inches in the last couple of months. Old Navy had skinnier and longer clothes. Online they have talls as well, which makes me so happy.

I spent the rest of the day trying to not take a nap, talking to my siblings and just enjoying a day of doing nothing. It's surprisingly hard to not clean stuff. I figured if I can't take Christmas off then I have a serious problem.

Then we continued our family tradition, since we moved to Texas, of having Mexican food for dinner. I got a cookbook to our old favorite restaurant, Chevy's, and we had shrimp and steak fajitas, followed by too many baked goods.

Afterwards, Fiona convinced me to sleep with her and I got 9 good hours of sleep, which hasn't happened in months. Poor TD, he just has sleep issues and it was making me think I had problems. It was nice to sleep with a quiet little girl who doesn't kick or make noise.