Christmas part 1

I have no idea how many Christmas posts there will be this year. I need to find my camera. Grandma - did I leave it at your house? Actually it's probably in one of the 873 bags that are sitting in my bedroom unpacked.  Christmas and Christmas travels have thrown up all over our house.  I even canceled the cleaning lady who was going to come this week. There was no way I could get the house in any reasonable shape before she came tomorrow.  

I want to go through the kids toys and purge before I put things away and we end up with toys coming out of every seam of our house.  I think my goals are lofty.  I am hoping to send the two older kids with the babysitter to the museum one day to get them out of the house so I can attempt to be productive or so I can sit on the couch and read or sleep or do whatever I want for at least a few hours. 

Aunt Lynne got a new puppy. Her name is Sydney. She's a good puppy but she's a puppy so she likes to play and nip and jump. My kids are wimps and did a lot of screaming and crying b/c she wanted to play with them.  

The girls and I got dressed to go to Christmas eve service with Grandma, Grandpa and Lynne. The girls did well. Madelyn didn't talk through the entire service which I was quite terrified of happening. She did a good job. She went up for the children's program. She was very excited about the lighting of the candles at the end of the service. She did a good job of holding on to the candle and letting Aunt Lynne help her hold it so she didn't get burned with melted wax or burn down the church.  I just saw visions of her dropping the candle and burning the church down.

As church was getting ready to begin she informed me (rather loudly) that she was so excited for the dancers to come out. I had to break it to her that there were no dancers. I don't really know why she thought there were going to be dancers. Maybe she confused the alter with a stage.