My friends at How To Be A Dad asked if I had any childhood Christmas photos laying around for a post they were putting together and I tracked down one of me meeting a really bored Santa. I thought I’d share the rest of the photos my mom scanned for me, with apologies to my family. Remember, we all thought we looked AWESOME when these were taken.

I have that hat in the closet and the orange knit reindeer jumper upstairs. Caroline wore it last year.

That dress is in Caroline’s closet

Putting things on babies: Hilarious since 1982

I’m making that face because I know one day this picture will NOT be the height of fashion

Caroline wore the dress my sister is wearing to a party last month and ruined it. SAD FACE. But the red one is still upstairs!

MUFF

Candy cane dress is in Caroline’s closet

This one is my favorite.

This was the year we got our “American Girl” dolls that were just blonde baby dolls. My grandmother actually sewed all the outfits after looking at them in a catalog and my grandfather made the chests & beds. I still have all of it.

 We decided to bump Christmas back to the 26th so we could all enjoy being together, so I’ll be back on the 27th when I can sit and breathe and sort through the epic number of pictures I plan to take over the next 3 days. A Blessed Christmas Eve, Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and may your pants still fit in January!

I think Caroline slept more this week than she has since she was a newborn. Poor lamb has never been so sick – the doctor called us Saturday morning just to check in since he was so worried about her. Luckily after we got her fever under control and started the antibiotics she improved VERY quickly and is right now playing hide and seek with her brother. Badly.

Sunday:

Sunday morning pancake face

This bedroll was a birthday gift and is has been right there on the floor since she opened it. She LOVES it.

Sure, a 6 pm nap seems like a great idea.

Monday:

Dinosaur Evan waits for Aunt Sara to get off the train

Do I have something on my face?

More naps

Tuesday:

This is how we keep company warm, since the thermostat is set to 63

Counting “monies”. It makes her very happy. I sense accounting in her future.

Caroline and Franz are ready to blast off

Wednesday:

Happy Birthday?

Rosy

Wiping his nose and scratching his butt. Oh boys.

Thursday:

Asleep at 8:45 am

Finally awake!!

Asleep again. Poor baby.

Friday:

This is my OB’s waiting room. I kind of want to live there.

Waiting at the pediatrician. Asleep again.

I doubt your commitment to my bath time tea party

Saturday:

E won a door prize at his work Christmas party. Maybe I’ll finally get my iPad back from the kids!

Snack in a fairy house

Now that the Neiman Marcus stuff is 50% off I thought about buying this again. But it is STILL $50 and I am STILL not that crazy.

Tomorrow my in-laws come to visit, the next day is Christmas Eve, on the 25th we’re going to make cookies and watch Christmas movies and then have our “Christmas” with presents and stockings on the 26th. Even with extra-early Thanksgiving the month has flown past and I can’t believe it’s almost over. I’m just so happy both kids look like they’re going to be healthy (KNOCK ON WOOD) by the time we celebrate Christmas.

Did you take iPhone photos of your week? Link up with one or several below! Please consider joining, even if you haven’t done it before – it’s really fun!

Thank you for your texts, phone calls and tweets friends. We’re in the other half of the state from the shooting so we are all OK. A friend on Facebook reposted a status update from a relative who lives in Newtown, Connecticut today, thanking everyone for their thoughts and prayers but asking that we stop tuning in to the 24/7 news coverage so the media will leave them alone. I couldn’t agree more. I have no words for what happened and my children are too young (thank God) to be aware of what’s happened, so I’m trying to prevent it from affecting them by tuning out. Caroline’s birthday party was on Saturday and I am so, so thankful her 2-year-old world is untouched.

Sunday:

Party prep

Awesome parenting 101: don’t be afraid to use your sleeping daughter as a mouse pad.

Mr. Sparkles McBear

Monday:

Stretches during Stroller Strides

Because obviously you need a helicopter when you go shopping.

I have no idea why I owned so many creepy dolls as a child

Tuesday:

I woke up to silence & found them like this in Caroline’s room.

Buying Mormor a Christmas present in Mystic

Sharing hugs and a calculator

Wednesday:

Caroline demanded the huge car cart then refused to ride in in. Oh, 2 year olds.

Apparently they think the grocery store is really cold?

Part prep #2

Thursday:

Solo grocery shopping with a peppermint mocha = dream come true.

We’ve never been in this toy store before. We will DEFINITELY be going back.

I kind of want a monkey riding a bicycle for my front yard.

Friday:

Up before the sun, but at least he has a cat to keep him warm.

Bumpa made a joke about putting the children to work. The children insisted on following through. Note the jammies under her coat and boots. Note to Bumpa: Toddlers don’t understand sarcasm.

The last photo I took on Friday was at preschool drop off. The rest of the day I checked out of my phone.

Saturday:

Checking out the candy selection on the Frost Your Own Tree table

Someone please come over and help me eat leftovers.

A bathtub tea party requires your best necklace

For the rest of the day we’re going to eat leftover cookies and cuddle on the couch and watch Disney and play anything the kids want to without complaining. Actually, that’s pretty much the plan for every day for the rest of the year. We’re boring, but at least we are together.

Did you take iPhone photos of your week? Link up with one or several below! Please consider joining, even if you haven’t done it before – it’s really fun!

E has to work on Christmas this year. I realize in the scheme of Ways The Military Can Screw Up Your Holidays having to work on Christmas Day is pretty minor, but it’s the first time this has happened since having kids. (Funny enough, neither of us can remember if it happened BEFORE kids – Maybe once? I know it happened the very first year we were dating but we weren’t spending the holidays together then.)

I’m really glad he’s not deployed. I’m glad it’s only a 24 hour watch. I’m glad we have some family visiting so our day can still be special. But I’m a little stumped on what to do about Santa, whether I need to hire a real beard Santa or not.

The way our day(s) would go if E didn’t have work is: Christmas Eve service at our church, open one present before bed, wake up at 7 am, open our stockings, open our gifts, make pancakes, eat way too much chocolate, have some sort of Christmasy dinner, get really bored and whiny, fight over new toys, put on fresh jammies (since we’re probably still wearing the ones we woke up in), go to bed.

This year we have three options.

1. Santa comes early. One of us sneaks all the gifts out and fill the stockings while the other loads the kids into the car for church and we open everything before bed on Christmas Eve. The major problem with this plan is getting the kids to GO to bed. They are sooooo tired in the evenings now that they don’t nap and I’d expect at least a couple meltdowns during the gift-opening, followed by major over-tired hyper energy boosts that keep them up until 11 pm. But in the morning they’ll have all the new presents to play with and we can still have pancakes.

2. Santa comes late. The kids can’t read a calendar, they don’t know what day it is. So we go to Christmas Eve service, put them to bed, and when they wake up it’s just a fun Play With Grandma and Grandpa day. I put out the gifts after they go to bed and we have normal Christmas on the 26th. I’ll let the kids open their stockings while we wait for E to get home and then he jumps right in to presents. We can all spend the whole day together, complete with pancakes and Christmas dinner. But on the 25th of December we won’t celebrate anything and I’m not entirely sure that won’t bum me out.

3. Early morning Christmas. E doesn’t actually have to be at work until 9 am (AT work, which means he has to leave here around 8 am) so we could potentially get all the major Christmas activities done before he goes in. We can wake the kids up at 6 am for stockings and presents (if they aren’t already up from excitement). Then the kids can play with their bazillion new toys all day, we can have something casual for lunch, and they can go to bed at the regular time. ALSO maybe possibly after they go to bed I can sneak off to see Les Mis alone, so I can sob my eyes out without judgment. We can do a Christmas ham and all the side dishes on the 26th if I work up enough energy, but I wouldn’t mind terribly if we skipped it for some pizza. The down side is the rush to get everything over with before E goes in to work – do we want to make it a race to open everything as fast as possible?

I realize this is an insanely first world problem – “Oh noes! My kids are getting SO MUCH stuff for Christmas we need HOURS to open it all! We might not get pancakes together! So tragic!” – but I’m trying to figure out how keep Magical Christmas magical for the ginger bebehs.

What would you do for your family? Option 1, option 2 or options 3?