Christmas...the last gasp

Well...the holidays were a bit of a mixed bag in our household this year. Kathi and Petur's Christmas Eve-eve party was smashing. It was so much fun to see Patty and the boys (both for the party and for the earlier cookie-baking festivities). Also, wonderful to see Mike and Molly who made the long drive from Oregon!

We finally got to meet Annie's mystery-man Peter, who seems like a very cool guy. Everyone held there breath while Jack treacherously waved his lit candle to and fro, but eventually all of the candles were lit and no one went up in flames. Phew!



We love this picture of Kathi and Finn. Two beauties!!!

One of the best parts of our entire Christmas holiday was getting to spend so much time with Patrick's best friend Eric and his son Jude. Here are Finn and Jude together - two sweet peas in a pod.

And one of my other favorite sweet peas, our cutie pie nephew Felix. It never ceases to amaze me how calm and gentle Finn and Felix are in comparison to Mr. Jack. Both Finn and Felix managed to light their candles without incident. We also noted that Amy and Jamie had many small, lovely breakable Chritsmas trinkets at Felix's eye level. Ahhhh...those were the days. I tease Jack a lot in my posts, but honestly he reminds me a lot of Mike and if he demonstrated his rascal-side during the tree-lighting portion of the evening, then his gregarious, social side came out later when he lead the group in our most raucous carol-singing session in years. Thank you to Eric, also, for livening things up a bit and throwing in a few harmonies.

A good time was had by all at the Christmas Eve party...and then came Christmas. Patrick and I were busy wrapping up presents when Jack let out a terrible shriek. I took one look around our paper and ribbon-strewn living room floor and said, "Patrick, hide all the wrapping stuff NOW!" Then I ran in to check on Jack who had come down with the stomach flu. I will spare you most of the details except to say that I did 20 loads of laundry in two days and Jack and I managed to sleep for about a grand total of 3 hours during that time.

Here is Jack just lying there, feeling quite miserable. Finn was so sweet, he opened Jack's presents for him and demonstrated each one to try to make Jack feel better.

I was very, very sorry to miss Christmas with the family. We look forward to it all year long and I was especially sorry to miss seeing Mike and Molly a bit more, and Patrick's grandpa Hank. I think Finn and Patrick had a great time though and...I must confess, things were probably a bit more relaxed down there without us.

The funniest thing to me in the whole Christmas fiasco of 2009 is that we usually pack all the presents up and bring them to Kathi's before the kids see them. We couldn't do that this year because Finn came out and saw all of them by the tree in the midst of one of Jack's sicko sessions. He came running to me in the bathroom and said, "Momma! Santa Claus came, Santa Claus came!" I could see the little gears in his head already turning, thinking..."Wait a minute. Mom and Dad are still awake." So...I did what the Grinch did, I thought up a lie and I thought it up quick. I said, "I KNOW! I saw that, too. I think Santa must have been on his way to Grandma Kathi's house when he got the message that Jack was sick, so he turned around and zoomed over here and snuck all the presents in while Daddy and I were cleaning up Jack's bed and getting him in clean jammies." And my little scientific boy, who never lets anything go without asking 30 questions nodded sagely and said, "Yeah, I thought that was what happened." I think little kids want to believe in Santa as long as they can. And why not? We can all use a little magic in our lives.

And now...on to Patrick for the rest of the Christmas report. Love to everyone! It was so good to see all of you. I'm sorry Jack and I didn't get to see you more, but we love you all and hope you had the merriest of times.

Well, Em covered most of the dramatic moments! After that, the morning was your basic Christmas bacchanal! Of course we missed Jack and Momma terribly!! It really wasn't the same without them - but we were happy to be with all of the folks at Mom and Petur's house, and the show must go on : ) We feel soooo lucky to be with so much family on Chrismas these days including Anne & Sonja!!

It was great that Sonja made it for Christmas this year from Switzerland!! I hope that she got to study for her medical finals enough!!

Finn with new watch!



Lovely Anne with stylish new sweater!!

Petur with big new book!!

Afterwords we had a great breakfast!! It was sad without Em and Jack, but Mom and Petur still made it a wonderful Christmas morning!!

After Mom's, Finn and I headed down to San Diego to see Grandpa Hank, Dad and Molly. Jack was feeling better, but the thought of him being sick in the car for three hours was not heartening, so still no Momma and Jack : (

More Christmas presents though!!! And Finn got to use his new camera - I'll post some of his pictures soon!!!

Including this one!!! We love you Grandpa Hank!!

Hope everyone had a great Christmas and wasn't feeling too sickly!! While we were driving around, Finn & I had some great talks about God & Jesus & what Christmas is all about. We saw a billboard for a show called "Life Unexpected" and Finn said that we had some unexpected things happen that Christmas, which was really true, but we still felt the magic of the season!