On the 4th Day of Christmas

A boy stayed home from school sick and then shared it with his mommy. Why did I teach him to share?

Yes, I missed yesterday. Dart woke up in the morning with a sick tummy. He stayed home and was pretty much fine after about 10:00, but was glad he stayed home. About 5:30 last night I felt like I could have gone to bed and slept until morning. I ended up going to bed about 9:30, which for me is EARLY!! I still felt bad this morning, but pushed through it. I'm still not 100%, but have no choice but to keep going. Still a lot to do before we leave tomorrow and before Christmas.

4 Traditions we have:
1. Opening 1 gift on Christmas Eve before Church. Each "kid" gets to choose one gift to open. We usually try to make sure the gift they pick is something other than clothes.

2. Giving 3 Gifts. When I was the only grandkid they went a bit crazy and bought a ton of gifts. Well when they were finding gifts in February that were never opened or missed on Christmas they decided something needed to change. So my grandma talked to friends and several of them mentioned giving 3 gifts, just as Jesus had received 3 gifts. My mom usually goes with clothes, books and game or movie, and toy. Now that doesn't mean there is one piece of clothing inside. Audrey usually has a HUGE box full of clothes. I'll admit when I was younger I hated this. All my friends got lots of gifts. Now I look back and realize I always got the things I wanted most. It really makes my kids stop and think about what it is they REALLY want.

3. Opening 1 gift at a time. We don't all get to go crazy and open all our gifts right away. We start with the youngest and they pick one and we go from there to the oldest and start back over. This way we all get to see what everyone opens and it makes it all last a lot longer. It usually takes us about 3 hours to open gifts.

4. Christmas Eve Dinner at my mom's. It's nothing fancy, just lots of finger foods and hanging out. And usually we try a new "adult" drink, but we also have our favorite Pomegranate Martini.