Merry Christmas (thank God that's over)

So Monday I am putting in my time at work of half a day in which nothing is actually getting done. (I didn't get to sleep the night before until 1:00am due to the fact that I was making buckeyes.) Just for grins I call the Walmart near my house to see if they restocked the elusive TV that I have been looking for for weeks. I have been to every walmart in town numerous times in the past two weeks (at least 10 visits to 4 walmarts) for a gift for my Uncle from my mom. They actually had the TV that I have been searching for. I should have let my fingers do the walking before, but it's a guy thing I guess. So I am trying to get out of work and over to the store before they sell out. Jen has also asked me to pick up a few things for her at the same time. So 12:30 at walmart on Christmas eve.. yeah it was nuts. I had to wait in a long line to check out, but was pumped that I found that frickin TV for my mom. I get home and Jen heads out the door for work. After some farting around I head out the door with the boys. We go to CVS for some tape for presents and then to Papa Murphy's to pick up Pizza. This was my attempt to keep Christmas simple so we wouldn't have to worry about cleaning up dishes at mom's house, and to keep the amount of food to a minimum. Those two little jaunts were almost half an hour. Lucky for me the boys were in a pretty good mood and had fun running around papa Murphy's while I waited for my pizza to be made. Of course they made it wrong (was supposed to be half and half) so I waited a little longer for them to correct it. We headed to mom's and the boys were having fun running around and playing with the dogs. Of course there was a ton of food even with me trying to keep it simple, but nothing that couldn't be frozen. Mom had Uncle Dave get a sheet cake and had them write "happy birthday Jesus" on it (very cute). Of course Uncle Dave gets a huge 22x18 sheet cake which no one ate since we were stuffed with everything else. We visited with mom and uncle Dave for a while. Finally around 6:30 I started putting the pizzas in the oven to bake. Dan and Rhonda showed up around 7:00. Jen didn't get there until almost 8:00 because of work even though the mall closed at 6:00. Got to love retail. Anyhow we started opening presents and of course the boys got one thing and just wanted to play with that. They didn't fully get the concept of having more (a whole bag of stuff) to open. For some reason Rhonda was in a real hurry to leave so the present opening got rushed a little bit. We sat the boys in front of us and just opened opened opened. After that everyone headed for the door. I could tell the mom and the boys were getting tired. I was attempting to clean up the kitchen before I left, but for some reason Andrew got into a fowl mood and was screaming and crying, and he only wanted me to hold him. I was trying to quickly clean the kitchen, load the car, and get the boys home with Andrew screaming. On my last trip to the car I look back at Andrew crying on the floor and then "that" cough, and puke everywhere. Son of a Bit**. So Jen and I were attempting to clean up puke on top of everything else. Finally we headed out the door and got the boys home around 10:00. Andrew was asleep in the car and William was not long in falling asleep too. Then Jen and I had to wrap presents for the boys, so we were doing that until almost midnight. Both Jen and I commented that we both felt a great calming feeling hit us after getting home. I don't know if it was just the stress of Andrew or the thought of all the other stuff going on.

Christmas morning, but boys kind of slept in (almost 8:00am) and we all headed downstairs.
The boys don't even notice the presents in their stockings and under the tree and start playing with stuff from last night. But after a little bit we tore into them too. The present of the year for the boys was a train track called Geo tracks which the boys have been playing with non stop for two days now (even without batteries). One of the bonus finds at Walmart on Christmas eve was a package of honey buns. Every year it used to be a tradition for us to get up on Christmas morning and have Mortons honey buns and orange juice, but the Morton company stopped making them and I didn't find anything to replace them, but the ones that I found were real close and very tasty. So after "present carnage II" we loaded up the Jeep and headed to the in-laws for "present carnage III". We had a very nice turkey lunch and then more opening of presents. We hung out there for most of the day and headed home around 9:00.

Wednesday I took off of work to burn off a personal day and to give me a little more of a vacation. Of course Jen had to work, but the boys spent the day playing with their toys and new Geo track. One of the things that I got from my mom was a nintendo WII. I was really close to telling her that it was too much and that she should take it back since she has alot of expenses now after her surgery. But I hooked it up and played with it a little bit, annnnndddd yeah it's not going back. It's pretty fun. Hopefully I will find the time to play with it more often. Wednesday night I spent a couple hours trying to get the web cam working so my dad and I can talk to each other on-line, but I think he had a glitch on his side somewhere so it kinda worked. My in-laws then showed up and delivered one of my presents (attic stairs) that I got the night before. So overall it was a petty good Christmas.