Christmas Week

Wow, what a crazy week! I meant to blog sooner with pictures from Christmas, but I just haven't had the chance! The few days leading up to Christmas were crazy with Buzz finishing the final inpatient rotation of his medical school education (!) and Sunny and I getting a stomach virus. We somehow managed to get all of the presents wrapped and ready and crossed our fingers that Buzz and Sparkle wouldn't get sick too.

We had grand plans for Christmas Eve: several weeks before Christmas, we (together with our friends) reserved a horse-drawn carriage ride downtown to look at Christmas lights. We went to the 4 o'clock church service and out to dinner prior to our ride. Just after our food arrived at the table, I noticed that Sparkle was under the table, doubled over, squirming, and leaning on her chair. I told her to sit down and she said that her tummy hurt. I pulled her into my lap and dumped a bowl of rice over onto her plate to make room... the next thirty seconds or so consisted of me begging Sparkle to throw up in the bowl and not anywhere else, and her panicking that I was shoving a bowl in her face (she thought that I wanted her to eat the rice). She did eventually lose it... Buzz says that he's not sure if there is a point system for these sorts of things, but awarded me 100 points for catching it all in the bowl and cleaning Ava up without anyone in the restaurant noticing. Our friends win "Best Sports of the Year" for being able to finish their dinners and still beg us to continue with our plans for the night despite their chances of catching whatever bug it was that we were passing around. We left the restaurant with extra cups in hand, just in case. After much debate we decided that Sparkle had likely emptied her tummy (she lost it once more in her kid cup as we were leaving), so we continued on to meet our carriage. We had a great time and wish that Sparkle would have felt better so that she could have enjoyed it to the fullest.

The girls fell asleep in the car on the way home and we got to work creating Christmas morning magic. We were up until 1am, not bad.

Christmas morning was fun. Sunny has figured out how to rip the paper off of presents. She still likes to play with everything that she gets as she opens it. Sparkle, on the other hand, has decided that the thrill is in the opening. She finished before the rest of us and wondered why she didn't have any more to open. The favorites by far are our new piano (keyboard, really), Mario Kart for our Wii, and these plasma cars that my parents sent:

After our gifts were opened, we headed over to our friend's house for a Christmas party (Sparkle was feeling better and all of our friends said that they were okay with us going - so far no one else has come down with our ailment!). It's the second year that we've had Christmas with our small group and it's such fun to share the day with our friends since most of us have little to no family in the area. We ate well, decorated giant gingerbread men...

...painted picture frames for recent group photos...

...and best of all, played Wii "larger than life" with our friend's new video projector, a basement wall, and our new Mario Kart game.

It snowed between 8 and 16 inches here on Christmas day (depending on where in the valley you were), so we were glad that we had planned on spending the night in our friend's guest room and didn't have to drive in the mess. We spent a lazy morning with our friends, then returned home for naps to recover from all of the fun that we had.

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On Sunday we had brunch and church at our house. Our church made packets available for the congregation to gather in homes with their friends the Sunday after Christmas, so we hosted for our small group. Our friends brought their video projector and we watched our pastor via DVD on our living room wall. The ten adults did the discussion questions while the kiddos watched a movie in the play room. Once church was over, we headed out for sledding.

Sparkle and her friend wouldn't get out of their sled. Somehow every time they got to the bottom of the hill, they convinced someone to pull them back up. I would have made them walk, but they always managed to charm some poor fellow into a great workout.

After sledding, the ladies went to the mall while the little ones napped and the dad's played more Mario Kart. We all met up for dinner at Sweet Tomatos to round out a full and fun day.

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New Year's Eve we hosted again at our house. We rang in the new year live with those in New York so that the kids could be part of the fun. The coming of 2009 is especially exciting for us as Buzz will earn his MD this year! We're not sure what this year holds for us or where we'll be ringing in 2010, but we are excited to be off on the next leg of our journey!