A Commune Christmas

As is the case every year, Chistmas at the Commune was a glorious event. The girls spent the time between the end of school and Christmas eve at their father's house. This was actually kind of nice because I had exactly 2 presents for each of them up until the Thursday before Christmas. I realize I tend to procrastinate - but not to that extent usually. I started to get a bit paniced. Luckily, they weren't hard to shop for and I found them plenty of fun (and inexpensive!!) stuff for Santa to bring.

On Christmas eve I went to the Commune for dinner - my Mom decided that she wanted to make prime rib - it was, of course, FANTASTIC. I brought with me all of the girls' gifts and an overnight bag for all of us. The plan was for everyone (me, the girls, my parents, Greg, Angel, Lilly, Liz, and Davy) to spend the night Christmas eve so that we could all have Christmas morning together. I was allowed to pick up the girls from their Dad's at 9pm - so there really wasn't any sense in driving them home to Chardon so that they could go to sleep, just to wake up and go back to Grandma's in the morning. The girls were AMAZINGLY excited to get to spend the night at Grandma's with everyone - although Olivia was extremely concerned that Santa wouldn't know where to find her. My mom assured her that everything would be okay. It took the girls a while to calm down after getting to Grandma's but I finally got them to sleep around 10:30. Then the "adults" (and I use that term loosely) sat around drinking yummy things and opening our presents. I think we finally got to bed around 2am.

Christmas morning all of the girls (including Lilly) slept in until nearly 8:30. They opened their presents calmly and were very happy with everything they got. Their big gift this year was an mp3 player. All 3 of them LOVED it...surely, that had to be their favorite gift, right?...if not, what could it be?...it was the $6 watch. Incredible. I will never again wonder "what time is it?" Nope, never...because now I am updated on the exact time every 2-3 minutes by at least one of them. And if one of them looks and tells everyone what time it is, the other two have to make sure their watches match - down to the exact minute. The good part is that Santa (he's so smart) ;-) bought them non-digital watches. So they are getting very good at telling time. They also got a bunch of "inside activities" like paint-by numbers, ceramics to paint, etc...they are very crafty and it keeps them busy for HOURS.

After the presents, Greg made breakfast for everyone while we drank Mimosas and White Russians. YUM. Then we pretty much just cleaned up from breakfast, chatted with each other, and started cooking dinnerwhile the kids entertained themselves with their new goods. Cooking and eating are real events at the commune - and we do them well - mostly the eating part. Poor Davy was so hungover from Christmas eve that he could only take the chaos in small doses and went home to nap a couple times.
Tiffany stopped over with her two adorable little boys for dinner. Overall it was a pretty calm day. The girls and I headed home (car packed full of crap!) around 5pm and went to bed early.

The girls were home from school until Jan. 2nd so I took a few vacation days so that I could stay home with them. I had to go into the lab for a few hours on Thursday but other than that - I was playing with my girls. It was nice to be able to see them, but I have to say - that much time alone with my girls made me very happy to come back to work this week! We did go see the new Alvin and the Chipmunks movie. I was impressed. I didn't expect to enjoy it as much as I did...and now they girls are walking around singing "witch doctor" - makes me laugh every time.

Hope you all had a wonderful holiday and best wishes in the new year!