Christmas & Santa's Big Scramble

Christmas Eve, Mr Hubs had duty. =/ The girls and I went to church in the afternoon for our first ever candle light service. It was beautiful! After coming home and eating dinner, we made cookies for Santa. Miss Dainty chose the chocolate chip mint cookies from The Joy of Vegan Baking. They were pretty good. I wish I could have taken more pictures of them helping with the baking, but it was hard enough keeping them from eating the non-tasty ingredients, and spilling flour all over the place. They had a blast though.

On Christmas morning, my grandparents drove in.  This actually was a bit of a surprise, because up until the day before, I thought they weren't coming down due to our impending bad weather.  But they decided to drive down and at least stay for a few hours to see the girls open their presents.

When Mr Hubs finally made it home from work, we started on brunch: soy chorizo and potato breakfast burritos.  They were awesome!  I absolutely adored watching my grandma help my girls roll out tortillas.  I remember her helping me when I was younger.  It was so incredibly sweet.  I love it when they get to spend quality time with my grandparents.

After breakfast, we opened presents.  There were plenty of priceless moments, but two will stay in my mind forever.  The first was the look on my grandma's face when she opened the rose scented rosary from (and blessed at) the Vatican in Rome.  (We only recently re-found it after moving back here a year and a half ago!) Her expression was priceless, and the moment was incredible for me.  And second was when Miss Dainty opened her skateboard.  Her eyes lit up when she recognized what it was, and she screamed, "It's a SKATEBOARD!!!  SANTA GOT ME WHAT I ASKED FOR!!!  IT'S A SKATEBOARD!!!"  Now there is an interesting story behind it, too.

Miss Dainty hadn't asked for anything in particular for Christmas throughout the entire Christmas season.  We choose not to have cable and the like, so she never sees all the millions of commercials telling her what she has to have to be the coolest kid on the street.  So, we were just going to get a few fun things and leave it at that, especially since a few family members had sent gifts to them.

Three days before Christmas, Miss Dainty decided to write a very last minute letter to Santa.  She wrote:  "Dear Santa, For Christmas I'd like a skateboard and a Kung Fu Panda set with a red belt and a sword.  And for my sister, can you bring her a new baby doll and a baby bed?"

Immediately, I panicked, only because the things she thoughtfully asked for her sister, I knew her sister was already getting from my grandparents.  What are the chances of that?  How would Miss Dainty feel on Christmas morning, if Santa had brought Baby D what she had asked for her, but not what she had asked for herself?  Oh dear.  What a problem!

And I had figured, up until this point, that Miss Dainty had come to the conclusion that Santa was just for fun.  She had been asking tons of questions about whether or not Santa was real, and how he traveled all over the world in one night, etc. etc.  At one point while running into a "Santa" at a store who would pose for pictures with the kids, she told me, "Mom, I don't think that was Santa.  I think that was just a regular guy."  And then a few minutes later, she said, "Man!  I should have asked him if the reindeer really fly!"  Needless to say, I really didn't know what to say.

So, there I was "mailing" Miss Dainty's letter on the way to the store, wondering what were we going to do?  While at the store, I quickly looked for either of her wishes, and found neither.  I texted Mr Hubs who was at the Nex on base and asked him to look.  He called later and said he had no luck finding the items there either.

After the girls and I got home that afternoon, I started preparing Miss Dainty for the chance that maybe her letter had gotten there too late, or perhaps Santa got her something different.  Mr Hubs called again on his way home from work and said he would stop by Toys R Us and hopefully find something.  They had no Kung Fu Panda products.  (I guess that's the only bad thing when your kids don't watch commercials, they don't even know what's "popular.")  I thought about asking him to stop by a karate school to see if he could buy a uniform, although that would be quite a bit more expensive than a toy costume of some sort.  He later called and said he had found the skateboard!  So, we went with that instead.  We definitely lucked out!  I'm still surprised we were able to find one of her wishes on such late notice.

But when she opened that present (we saved it for the very last,) and had such a great reaction, it made the last minute scramble so completely worth it.

The girls loved everything they got though, and really all of their presents were so awesome: useful, family oriented, and/or creative.  Thanks to everyone who sent them presents, they were really great! 

Later, we all went to a good friend's house for a potluck dinner.  (I was bummed I forgot to take pictures.)  It was nice to hang out and chat while all of the kids played together.  And then, (thanks to Mr Hubs fixing my laptop's webcam... he's my HERO!!)  we were able to skype with family in Texas!!  It was so awesome!  It was such a great Christmas for us: quality family and friend time, and priceless moments.

I hope everyone had a great Christmas!