Christmas Eve and Christmas

We were planning to go to Hawai'i for Christmas, but tickets were about $900 apiece. Tutu and Papa could get tickets to California for less than $300, I believe, so they took one for the team. They flew to California the week before Christmas and went straight to Ventura to spend some time with Christian and Shandra's family. Then they took the train down to Oceanside on Christmas Eve. I made a lot of terrible food while they were here. It was tragic, really, this streak of bad cooking I was on. Anyway, we made a chocolate caramel pecan pie that actually turned out OK. Tutu's first order of business upon arrival was helping Ever make the crust.

For some reason, the littles love playing with Papa. He does not solicit their affection, but kids love him. Tiny and Wrenzy dragged him off to play. Fortunately for Papa, Zoza told him exactly what to do. Here, his instructions were to go to sleep on the chaise.

After dinner, we read the Bible account of Christ's birth and awkwardly tried to act it out. (I finally realized that to act out the nativity, the narration has to be a modern-language summary of the story, not a reading from the Bible. News flash.) Then Tutu read The Happy Prince.

We sang. Despite the fact that she cannot read, Zoza tried very hard always to be on the right page in the book of lyrics.

Then Jim read a little more to the kids, and they were off to bed at a pretty decent hour.

The girls slept until a normal time on Christmas morning, which was lovely.

Tiny wasn't really great at the stocking thing. Hers didn't get unpacked until Ever and Wren did it for her. She just fixated on each present and didn't want to move on.

We had waffles with Nutella for breakfast. Ever is a nutty Nutella eater. Somehow she got it on her pants and all over her foot.

I had done a last-minute Target run a couple days before Christmas to get a few things to add to the girls' Christmas gifts. One of the things I'd gotten was a leotard (technically a "biketard," but I hate that word) for Wrenzy since she was starting gymnastics. I was so glad I did because she was ecstatic about it. She said something like, "This is the best present ever!" when she opened it, and she wore it all day.

Ever challenged Papa to a game of chess on her new chess set.

Tutu and Wrenzy played a memory game.

That night we watched Home Alone, which everyone thoroughly enjoyed. I loved hearing the laughter from the couch while I was in the kitchen. It's amazing how many of the lines from that movie I remember.

It was a mellow and lovely Christmas.