Christmas in Public

Christmas was good.

I ended up not going to church up here, I’ll spend an hour with my headphones and watch my church. I figured that if I was going to watch a fed-in video I might as well just watch my home church through Facebook. I plan on doing that tonight.

My doctors appointment was disappointing and it put me in a funk for the rest of the day. I tried so hard to get out of said funk but I was hoping for a lot of good news and didn’t receive it and as usually, I had mismanaged expectations. Maybe that’ll be my New Years goal, to have properly managed expectations.

We didn’t stay overnight at the house but instead came back to the hotel and got up early on Christmas morning.

The boys were so excited with all their goodies, only one little slip when Ethan didn’t get a red robot and received blue instead (but really, he’s 5 so sometimes those things matter). They made out well this year, and so did Liam and I. Mom went overboard and got me some extras that weren’t on my, technical, list. She got me two extra “wear” items and cute “just because” item, and she got Liam and I our combined item of an iRobot vacuum.

Lauren won the gift giving award this year, again, with a wonderful stuffed penguin (in purple and white) that has a recording of my gram’s voice. She had saved a voicemail from Gram (who passed away 2 years ago) and I did not. So she paired down the voicemail and placed it in one of those button recorders, inside the penguin. Yeah, she’s good. She’s evil too because like Mom said, she’s giving a gift to see how much tears I squirt out whereas I’m giving a gift that will just make her smile. My gift to her was a handmade Harry Potter blanket, it’s in very soft (think for a baby) fabric. The pattern on the top has Harry Potter images and quotes.

Liam and I headed back to the hotel around 630 I think.

I was back up there this morning so she could go to the doctors and then to the apartment to start cleaning/finish packing and Zach could work. The boys are still too little to stay alone. I had the clean up the front living room and then they both worked on new Lego sets. Ethan needs help with these still but as he says “Preston is a Lego Master”. Such idol worship of his brother.

Now Liam and I are back in the hotel, I’ve developed a pretty bad sore throat/head cold symptoms and I’m ready to watch service from Christmas Eve and then get back into Becoming by Michelle Obama.

I hope you all had lovely days with your families.