Christmas

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas. We did. There was alot of running around, as usual, but I wouldn't have it any other way. If you live in our house, you learn to find really good hiding places (which means not hiding anything in our house) and this isn't from the kids. Well, the younger kids anyway. I am on a mission every Christmas to hide presents from ..........Rusty. My biggest kid of all. This is the man who unwrapped his Mom's birthday present from us one year because he thought it was something I had bought for him. When he was a little boy he stayed home sick from school one day, snooped, found something for him, unwrapped it and was wearing it when his Mom got home. He hasn't changed much, he's just gotten sneakier about it. He also loves to get up extremely early and drag the kids out of bed to open presents. He is also the man that gets so excited about what he has bought for me that he wants to give it to me before Christmas even gets here and he's that way about birthdays also. It's not all about what he's getting, he loves to give also. He has a really big heart. And I am saying that after he pulled me out of bed at 2 am on Christmas morning. He's 38 remember and he gets just as excited now as did as a kid. So anyway, we were up at 2 am and at my parents by 5:15. We opened presents there, had a little breakfast, loaded the car and headed back to the house by 9. We unloaded at our house, reloaded the car and headed to Rusty's mom's house to have Christmas again. Rusty's mom makes Christmas breakfast for all of us. There was 20 of us at her house. It's crowded but alot of fun. We ate and ate and ate and then it was time for presents. The kids open their presents first, youngest to oldest, and then they take their stuff to another room to go through again and the adults all take turns opening our presents. It's takes about 2 hours for all of the gifts to be opened. We stayed and visited there for a while and the we loaded back up again and headed home. Rusty had been sick all day, didn't eat anything, so I dropped him off at home so he could go to bed and then Blake, Ashleigh and I went back to my parents to eat dinner. Wayne had gone to his Dad's earlier in the day to spend a couple days with him. It was an extremely busy day and like I said I wouldn't have it any other way. I don't know what I would do if I didn't have anywhere to go on Christmas.
The kids got way too much stuff and so did the adults. Blake asked for some different kinds of things this year. He's only 8 but he really didn't ask for toys. He wanted a globe, some maps ( he has loved to look at maps as far back as I can remember. We have pictures of him when we went to Florida looking at maps with my Dad and he was only 4), arts and crafts and things like that. Steven got him a telescope and he loved that. We have taken it out on the deck but it has been too cloudy to use it yet. Santa brought him a Nintendo Wii. I wonder if you can throw out your back and shoulder bowling on that thing. I love it. It has been so much fun. In our house Christmas is the gun holiday so Rusty and Wayne both got new guns. Ashleigh asked for clothes, clothes and more clothes. Rusty said that is a boring gift but I completely and totally understand, you can never have too many clothes, shoes or purses. I love purses.
We had a wonderful Christmas, I think everyone is finally healthy, and we have all been very blessed to be able to be together. I look for the coming year to be much better than this past year, it was really a hard year.
God bless and good night.
Bridget