A Recap of Events.....

Things around here were a little lonely for us as we have no family here and the few friends we have obviously had plans with their own families. Also not helping matters was the fact that Ruben and I agreed not to buy for one another. I mean really, we are adults and buy whatever we want when we want, so who needs Christmas gifts? When it comes down to it, the whole holiday is for kids. Our mission was to make it special for Natalie, and keep the belief in the whole magic of the holiday and Santa alive - which we succeeded in for another year.

Since Ruben and I didn't buy for one another, all the gifts we spent the last few days wrapping had been for Natalie. After I laid all the gifts out, I saw it was going to be a VERY Pokemon Christmas! Natalie is so into collecting all the Pokemon figurines and cards that nothing else really mattered to her. In fact, I think she only asked for one other item - an art easel! She is such a little tomboy!

So anyway, Ruben and I had spent the days leading up to Christmas wrapping packages, but we didn't put any gifts under the tree till midnight Christmas Eve when we had just finished wrapping the last of the gifts. We took all the gifts downstairs, put out a half-eaten cookie on her "Cookies for Santa" plate, and a glass of milk (later after Ruben had eaten the remaing piece, she had said she wanted to send it in for DNA testing - LOL!). Ruben was concerned because we had a fire burning that night, but I told him not to worry about it, it's all in the "magic" of Santa. So at about 12:30am Christmas morning, we went to wake Natalie up, telling her that a sound on the roof and Lexie's subsequent barking had woken us up - we decided to wake her then cause Ruben's mom always calls right around midnight and wanted to talk to her. At first she was dazed and confused and had no idea what we were talking about as she sat there trying to wake up. Then suddenly it dawned on her that it was Christmas and Santa must have come. She couldn't get out of bed fast enough, and pushed at us to get out of her way so she could run downstairs and see. She got to the bottom of the steps, saw the tree and just said OH MY GOD. She couldn't get over all the present that sat beneath the tree. I told her that they were all hers, and she just sat there not knowing where to begin. Finally she realized that one half eaten cookie sat on the plate, and began to tell us how Santa comes down the chimney - she said he touches his nose and the fire just goes out allowing him to come down the chimney and not be burned - and that once he leaves, the fire just starts again. I even managed to capture a picture of her pointing to her nose as she told us the story, it's 1 of nearly 200 I took that night! All are posted on Flickr, just follow the link. At first she was very slow in un-wrapping her gifts (cause she was on the phone), but after about the 10th one she finally picked up speed. Other than all the Pokemon gifts she got from Santa, us, and Grandma - she also got a reindeer Webkinz from Santa, although she thinks it came from Rudolph, and a cocker spaniel Webkinz from Lexie (our dog). She was actually very excited about those gifts, even though I think all the Pokemon's were her actual favorites. After about an hour she was finally done unwrapping them all, and she started playing with them as Ruben and I tried to surprise each other. We weren't supposed to buy gifts for one another as I had just gotten a new camera and s Bamboo Fun tablet, and he had bought a Blu-Ray DVD player, as well as a new laptop as his dvd drive quit working. But I tried to surprise him with something kind of small. I bought him seasons 1, 2 & 3 of The Office. He loves that show so much, but has missed so many episodes. He bought me a 18kt and diamond Fleur De Lis pendant cause I've been wanting some Fleur jewelry for a while now. Living in New Orleans you'll find that everything is Fleur De Lis, it's just that I couldn't find any jewelry in yellow gold which is my preference - but he managed to find it somewhere. We were both pretty happy with the results. Christmas was pretty spectacular. Even the weather managed to co-operate, as it got a tad chilly just in time. The only thing that we didn't do was the "traditional fare" (normally I would have cooked just like Thanksgiving) for dinner, as this time around I am still in pain and healing from my surgery, so I just roasted a small turkey breast in the oven, made my mom's famous fried green beans, this cajun rice stuffing dish I had tried at the store, and a pan of rolls for dinner. Dinner turned out great, and was much better than the Burger King we ate for dinner on Christmas Eve - I had been out running around all day getting my prescriptions filled and ended up being too exhausted to cook! We spent Christmas evening watching season 1 of Heroes, and just enjoyed the time together as a family. Tomorrow I'm sure Ruben will be back to work, then it will just be me and Natalie till school resumes on the 7th - although we do have her birthday party coming up on the 5th (her actual birthday is on the 4th, but it's a Friday), which will be a bowling/High School Musical theme & be just as hectic and as crazy as Christmas, so wish us luck. It's always so hard dealing with both events so close together.

Ok, so it's time to go back to cozing up on the couch and watching the rest of Heroes. When we stopped the last disc at 1:30 this morning, it had ended in a real climax so I gotta go watch the last couple discs! Hope you had a fantastic holiday as well!