Christmas weekend review

I can't believe Christmas has come and gone already. Our little family unit had a wonderful Christmas weekend.

We celebrated a little bit backwards this year. Usually we go to Christmas Eve Mass and then open presents and have our big Christmas feast on Christmas Day. This year, the Christmas Eve Family Mass was scheduled for 4pm, meaning show up at 3pm. Lil' B's naptime is usually from 1 to 3 in the afternoon, so we didn't think we could make 4 o'clock mass happen.

So we didn't. Instead, I cooked our Christmas feast of ham, green bean casserole, and sweet potatoes on Christmas Eve. I got the girls in their pajamas and we drove around looking at Christmas lights for awhile. Then we came home and watched Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. It was really quiet and cozy.

After Miss H finally fell asleep, Mr. Rose and I put out all the gifts. I could barely sleep because I was so excited for Christmas morning. I felt like a kid again. And not because I was really interested in getting any particular present. It was because I knew the girls were going to be so excited and so fun to watch.

Christmas morning we were up and in full present opening mode by about 7am. Miss H was so cute. She is able to recognize her name and B's name on the gift tags so she was handing presents out left and right. After opening the first few gifts, Lil' B got into it and just randomly started opening presents. It was so funny! Watching the two of them open presents was really the best Christmas present for me.

We managed to get all the presents unwrapped and get dressed and ready for Church on time. I really enjoyed going to Mass on Christmas Day as opposed to Christmas Eve. It definitely helped me keep the focus (with myself and with the kids) of Christmas on Jesus.

The rest of Christmas weekend was filled with eating leftovers, playing with new toys, and an occasional meltdown or two. It was a great family togetherness weekend even if it was just the four of us. I did miss seeing the rest of our family, but that's nothing that skype can't handle!

There were a couple of funny whoops moments. Thursday night Mr. Rose was making his first attempt to recreate his Mom's Chocolate Mint Roll, chocolate cake with peppermint filling rolled into a log. Everything was going well until he tried to put it in the oven, he tipped the pan slightly and half of it spilled out onto the oven door. Whoops! (He did eventually get it made and it was delicious!)

The next morning (Christmas Eve), we decided to run the oven self-cleaner to try to bake off the remaining cake roll. About 15 minutes into it, the smoke detectors starting alarming and we couldn't get them off! We were all still in our pajamas, but I loaded the girls up in the car and drove over to pick up donuts and coffee from Dunkin' Donuts. Mr. Rose was able to clear the smoke out of the house while we were gone. Crisis averted!

Phew, what a weekend! It was fun, it was a whirlwind, but I could not have imagined a better way to celebrate.

Merry Christmas friends!

Erin