Workmaster Christmas

A few days after Christmas, we headed to Grand Island, Florida to celebrate with my parents.

Christmas Day 2013 (and a few days after)

Christmas Day 2013 was not a typical Christmas Day for our family. Ben and Charlotte made their way into our room at 7am very excited to open presents. Rosemary, however, was still sick. I asked her if she wanted to open presents or wait and she decided to wait. I knew if she decided to wait she had to feel pretty bad. But our younger two were excited and ready to dive in so they took turns opening gifts.

Ben was excited about his Chick HIcks. This was the one he’d guessed the day before, although it was blue instead of green.

A little Spot for Charlotte. She loves Spot right now.

A plane from Planes.

A microphone.

A soccer goal

This proved to be a hit. It’s little reusable coloring book – it’s like paint with water, but when the water dries, you can paint the same page again.

The cargo plane that Ben requested

Rapunzel

Lego book

Charlotte’s guitar

She knew just what to do.

A Titanic coloring book

Settlers of Catan for Jonathan

Opening their stockings.

Rosemary opened her gifts while laying on the couch. Charlotte helped with her doll bed. She gave a little grin when she saw Saige, but that was pretty much it for her reactions.

Ben and I spent the morning building. He really did most of it, I just helped a little with the plane.

Subs for lunch.

Charlotte cozied up on daddy to watch some Jake and the Neverland Pirates.

Rosemary seemed to be doing better over the course of the day. She drank a little throughout the day and ate a little bit of bread and some watermelon.

The next morning, I did a little post-Christmas shopping. When I got home, Rosemary still wasn’t eating or drinking like normal. Our doctor’s office was closed, so I talked to the back-up office nurse and they encouraged us to go to the ER when Rosemary started throwing up again and still wasn’t drinking. So that afternoon, Rosemary and I headed to the Shands Children’s ER. A few hours, a dose of Zofran, two bottles of Gatorade, and many prayers later she was back on track and started brightening up. She was even given a little drawing pad at the hospital for the kids who were there over Christmas.

By Friday morning, Rosemary was herself and eating again. By Friday night, I’d been hit by the stomach bug. Maybe next week we’ll be healthy?

Christmas Eve 2013

We awoke on Christmas Eve a little before 5:30am to the sound of puke hitting the tile floor in our bedroom. Ben’s stomach bug was back. I cleaned him up and the floor and got him settled on the couch. At 6am, Rosemary came in, said that her stomach hurt, and she began throwing up as well. I got up and got dressed then headed to Publix while Jonathan got ready for work to get the food that we had planned on getting later in the day. We spent the day at home. Ben seemed to recover quickly, but Rosemary was sick all of the day and didn’t eat or drink anything. Needless to say, we missed Christmas Eve service. Our little girl was just way too sick.

We had everything ready for Christmas morning.

Rosemary wanted to sleep on the couch that night. Sweet girl spent all day and night there.

Christmas Decorations 2013

We finished wrapping early this year and put the presents out in hopes that they would be safe until Christmas morning. While intrigued, the kids did a pretty good job just looking. Ben went through some of the gifts to check out size and tried to guess (he was even right about one) but they all stayed completely wrapped for Christmas morning.

Our new ornaments this year were: the ballerina and the Titanic (which should have gone up last year, but didn’t have any smokestacks)

Rosemary’s moon she made at co-op with Melanie.

The Enchantment of the Seas from our cruise.

From our San Francisco trip.

And a few of the decorations from around the house:

Ben and Rosemary loved the ‘glass city’ they created from Dollar Tree ceramic houses. They had so much fun creating stories for it. And all of the kids enjoyed having their own trees in their rooms.

The Tale of the Christmas Card

Last Saturday morning, we decided to do our Christmas cards. We had to do everything; take the picture, design the card, print the card, address the envelopes, buy the stamps, and get them in the mail…all by about 2pm when our mail would be picked up. If we wanted to do cards this year, this was pretty much the last chance we had to get them out by Christmas.

As we were finishing up getting ready, Ben said his stomach hurt. He threw up. We got through pictures. Then he threw up again. He spent the rest of the day laying on the couch watching movies. By the afternoon, he was back to normal.

We took the photos on our driveway with the self-timer and ended up with some not-so-great shots. Here are a few, with the one we went with at the end. At one point Jonathan turned on the smile detection feature. We couldn’t figure out how to turn it off so whenever someone smiled, it just took the picture. At least we had one that worked. Next year we’ll try to take pictures earlier with all healthy children.

Smile detection!

And the final card.

Cousin Christmas 2013

We celebrated Cousin Christmas last Thursday. At the risk of TMI, it was a busier week than I had originally expected it be because I ended up being scheduled for a colonoscopy on Tuesday of that week. It was just routine since I have Crohn’s, but it basically meant that I was out of commission most of Monday and Tuesday as a result. Wednesday was pretty busy prepping for guests, and everything came together in the end, mostly because Jonathan is amazing.

The kids put on a nativity play. Joshua was Joseph, Charlotte was Mary, the girls in the back were angels, and Breanna was the narrator.

At one point, Charlotte took off her costume and decided she wasn’t going to be Mary anymore.

Then she changed her mind at the end and decided to hold Baby Jesus.

After the play the kids exchanged their books.

Charlotte got a Spot book.

Joshua got The Ox Cart Man.

Ben got a Lego book.

Sarah got Keep the Lights Burning, Abbie

Rosemary got A Pair of Red Clogs.

Breanna got Misty of Chincoteague.

Olivia got Celia Garth

And Matthew got Guns of Thunder.

Then the kids opened their gifts from Grandma and Grandpa Peine

After presents, we ate lunch. Thankfully it was warm enough to be outside this year.

So, since it wasn’t actually Christmas day, we went with a less than traditional meal and gave it a bit of a British twist. I put the wardrobe door back of from Rosemary’s birthday and we celebrated like we were in Narnia…or at least in Britain. So we enjoyed beef stew and parsnips with a spinach salad. We opened poppers and everyone wore their tissue paper crowns.

I’d never had parsnips before…but they were like sweet carrots. And I made two kinds of stew. I must say that the Pioneer Woman’s recipe served over mashed potatoes was my favorite.

We headed inside for stockings.

Then we enjoyed fresh donuts for dessert.

Before everyone left, we snapped a few group photos.

Merry Christmas!