Madness!!

The madness is over!!! It's been a crazy week for us... we may not actually leave town, but I think we do more traveling in two days than most people! I'll try to give a brief overview (and then some pictures!) of our past few days.

On Christmas Eve, Mike's parents came over in the morning for breakfast and to "do" presents with the kids and the two of us. It was quite nice. The children received a swing set from Grandma/Papa D that we'll put up in the spring. We had a swing set at the old house, but we left it there as part of the agreement reached when selling and the kids really missed having one! It was a long summer without our swing set! Anyway, the funniest part was the picture of the swing set in a box with suckers... the picture was thrown out of the box and each child grabbed a sucker! They had no idea! It's just like giving presents to babies - they only want the box!

After opening a ton of presents, Adriana took a nap and then it was time to get ready for church. We always go to mass on Christmas Eve, even though there are a ton of people and we have to get there a half-hour early! Here's the thing - it's hard enough to get the kids to sit through an hour mass, let alone an hour and a half! They did pretty well. Adriana was really the only "problem," but she really wasn't THAT bad. She doesn't sit still, ever, so she kept wandering around the cry room and visiting other kids.

After church we went to my parents' house for dinner and presents with them. It was low key, which was nice, and we took extra clothes for the kids to change into so they didn't have to wear their "nice" clothes all night. Adriana received her first of three baby strollers (this is a good thing - first of all, they break easily, and second of all, we need more than one so that they don't fight over them!). Uncle Michael gave us a wine cooler/refrigerator, which was completely unexpected and very thoughtful/nice! My parents gave us some money to put towards a new printer, which we need now that our old one isn't compatible with our new computer, and for anything else that we need. I think we'll get one of the "all-in-one" printers so we can scan and fax and all that good stuff!

We finally got home, put the kids to bed, and began wrapping ALL the gifts for the following day. I think we finally went to bed around midnight! Did I say I would be brief? I lied!

Christmas morning was wonderful! The kids were so excited and they really appreciated everything they received! Among the ridiculous amount of gifts they opened were bathrobes for each of them (we keep our house a little chilly) and the wii nintendo system. Santa rocks! Markus' favorite gift is his mp3 player that Mike pre-loaded with songs (we made this from us since Mike put the songs on it), Isabella loves the shopping cart and cash register, and Adriana immediately wanted her stroller/playpen/babydoll set opened!

Unfortunately, they didn't get to play with anything for very long because we left to go to my Grandparents' house. We did presents over there with all of my aunts/uncles/cousins and then left there about 2 hours later to go to Mike's parents' house. We did dinner there with his aunt/cousins/parents/brother and more presents for about 4 hours until it was time to leave and go to my Aunt Sherry/Uncle Doug's house on my dad's side of the family. There, the kids received about a million more presents, ate some more food, and then about 2 hours later it was finally time to go home. YIKES!!!

The kids didn't even get out of their pajamas yesterday and played all day long. I had to work and when I came home the house was a disaster! I think everything has calmed down now, but everyone is still pretty tired. The kids even slept until 9:30 this morning! THANK YOU! It was a long couple of days, but we loved every minute of it! However, I am glad it's over! :)