A Blue Christmas

As hard as we tried, this Christmas really turned out to be a bit of a blue one for our family.
It started out alright. On the weekend of the 20th and the 21st we had two family gatherings that were fun. Ellie and my niece Regan are at that wonderful age where they go off and play well together, so Rob and I had a lot of time to reconnect with relatives and eat lots of delicious food.

Story time with Uncle Nathan.

Regan quickly inhaled three cookies before anyone could stop her. :)

Sharing a picnic lunch.

Nana and Josh enjoying a game of Peekaboo.

Monday the 22nd Joshua began doing little gagging coughs in the car while we were running errands. In the night I woke up 3 or 4 times to hear him gagging on his throw-up...tiny little pukes that didn't really make any sense. We were hoping he had just eating something a little off.

Well in the morning, without thinking, I gave him his bottle of milk like usual, and it didn't stay down for more than 3 minutes. So that day was filled with random projectile vomit all over the place. Not anything too surprising or disturbing. Been there done that.

Christmas Eve we all woke up feeling pretty good. When I went into Ellie's room I told her it was Christmas Eve. "Christmas EVE!?!?" she repeated, "I hab to gib Santa a BIIIIG hug and gib him a candy cane!" I found this rather surprising, seeing as Ellie's been terrified of Santa her whole short life. "We need to go to the mall and see Santa at his workshop!" Ellie begged. I didn't promise her anything seeing as Rob and I were both working all day, and she and Josh were going to my parents' for the day. Well it didn't take much twisting for Ellie to convince her Auntie Leila to take her to the mall. Apparently it took three tries, and on the third try Santa noticed Ellie shyly watching him from a distance, and he waved and told her she had nice boots. WELL! If there's any way to win over a little girl like Ellie, it's to talk about her apple boots. She was 100% sold. I happened to peek out the window of the Hallmark store where I work just then, and saw her sitting on his lap! I quickly ran out just in time to see them get this photo of her:
She yacked his ear off about her fuzzy socks and how she was staying at Nana's that day, and he was very Santa-like and did a great job of feigning interest. Every time she sees the photo of her on Santa's lap she declares enthusiastically, "I'm not AFRAID ANYMORRRRE!" Santa has never played any part in my childhood Christmas's, but I've got to say, it was pretty neat to see Ellie overcome her fear and enjoy this aspect of Christmas for the first time.
Christmas Eve dinner with my family also started off alright, and was very yummy!! After we headed downstairs to read the story of the first Christmas and have the kids open their gifts. My dad valiantly tried to keep the girls attention with a children's version of Jesus birth, but they were just too excited to sit still. Their legs and arms were flailing all over the place the entire time.I don't need to mention how much fun the girls had unwrapping their gifts (as well as their little brothers' gifts):
Joshua seemed confused by this whole 'ripping off the paper' concept and kept trying to put it back on the present:
Well we only lasted until about 7:15pm and Rob and I both felt really gross and tired, and decided to cut our favourite night of the year short and go home. When we got home Rob just lay down on the couch and didn't move again for a looong time. I put Joshua to bed and then decided to do Ellie's new puzzle with her before putting her down. She was having a great old time when suddenly she sat back, put her fingers in her mouth and said, "My mouth hurts. No. My throat hurts. No. My tummy hurts!" And I said, "Ellie, do you have to puke?" And she said, "YES!" So we ran to the bathroom where she deposited pretty much all of her Christmas Eve dinner, and then she said, "Let's do the puzzle again, Mommy!" So we did, and then took another intermission to deposit her dessert...and then the rest of the night went downhill from there. Rob was making bathroom trips from 8 pm till 4 am and I was up with Ellie for most of the night. She was such a trooper. Every time I ran to her room to hold a bowl under her mouth, she'd curl back up in bed and say, "Thanks, mommy. I love you. See you tomorrow!"

Needless to say, Christmas morning we were all exhausted, except for Joshua who was now over the flu but had begun teething again. My mom graciously took him for the day while Rob slept, Ellie watched videos and slept, and I did mounds of yucky laundry and cleaned the bathrooms. Rob and Ellie recuperating together (he's tickling her hand...hence the hypnotized look on her face:)

Ellie and I managed to put together her new Playmobil house together on our own while Rob napped.

My flu never manifested itself aside from feeling nauseous ...and it's still kinda stuck in there (there are benefits and disadvantages to not being a puker!) So needless to say, we forfeited the gifts on Christmas day, and never got around to baking the birthday cake for Jesus that we had intended to.

Boxing day we all felt much better, so we decided to let the kids open their gifts from us and Grandpa and Grandma Balfour then. But as you'll soon tell from the photos, everyone was still really wiped, and there wasn't much enthusiasm to be found about anything:

Our humble little 12 inch tree.

Ellie and I sporting her new head bands. I bought her three girlie things (headbands, a necklace, and a princess crown) from a store called Ardene for $5 and they were her some of her favourite presents! Christmas sure doesn't have to be expensive at this age.

Joshua doesn't look that enthused, but these matchbox cars from Grandpa and Grandma are a BIG hit! This was the only gift he didn't try to re-wrap! :)

Ellie and I reading a book given to her from our landlords.

Feeling beautiful.

Josh and Rob wrestling once Josh lost interest in the gifts.

He decided to go off and explore instead.

Ellie was PUMPED to get some new Veggie Tales movies and CDs from Grandma and Grandpa. We've already spent a considerable amount of time dancing to the new songs (working off our Christmas goodies. Oh wait. Those all got puked out.)

We've all been kinda sleepy and groggy ever since. The biggest blessing of it all is that the kids have been sleeping some 13 hour nights, and Rob and I are getting lotttts of much needed rest!

So anyhow, this wasn't the Christmas I had envisioned for our little family - at all. And I would LOVE to be able to tell you that my attitude was great through the whole thing. But it wasn't. I did alright while everyone was puking as we were all in survival mode, but the next day the disappointment of it all really hit me, and I found myself actually getting angry about it. As much as I would have liked to believe that Jesus was the reason I was excited about Christmas, the truth was exposed when my favourite traditions went down the tubes (or shall we say, the toilet?) and I got grumpy about it. Already looking back I can see it was good that I was forced to turn to Jesus in a big way this Christmas and realize again how great my need for Him really is. I am speechless that he came to earth so he could die for a sinner like me. What a wonderful Saviour. There was no hype for us this Christmas. But Jesus was in the house. What more could I ask for?

p.s. Stay tuned for (hopefully) a more upbeat post at the end of this week. Rob is still on holidays and we plan on having a dang good time with our little family. :)