Saturday, December 27, 2008

Wise Man Meets Barbie

Ok, to be honest I was not sure I was going to survive the week. The kids got here on Monday and no cookies were baked, the tree wasn't even decorated and no presents were wrapped. Heck, half of them weren't even made yet, so it would have been pointless to try to wrap them.

Anna had been promised that she could decorate her own tree when she got here and she was anxious to get started. I was planning on having her decorate the little one in the family room but seeing that the big one was completely bare still I quickly wrapped some lights around it and let her go at it. Kyle and Morgan joined in and the next thing I knew they had the most beautiful creation. Not everyone has a Christmas tree with teddy bear in a leapord costume hiding in the branches and a yellow balloon animal of some sort perched just below the angel. They were very proud of it and I wouldn't change a thing on it.


Tuesday night we finally got some baking done, kind of. I think it was actually early Wed morning when we got to the fudge. Mark and Mark were doing a little partying in the kitchen and they were making us crazy because they were so loud and couldn't take a hint that we wanted them to get out of the kitchen and leave us to our important work. In fact the more we hinted the more obnoxious they became and we were eventually rolling on the floor laughing. So I finally said they needed to leave because fudge making is serious business and that prompted Mark B to come over and start grazing through all the cookies just to aggravate me. Finally he gave up after he got me mad enough.


It was another one of our exclusive creations. Our top secret peanut butter fudge recipe is so top secret we aren't even sure what the recipe is. So we had our annual Great Fudge Recipe Debate and finally agreed on the peanut butter/chocolate layered fudge recipe and realized then we wouldn't have any marshmallow cream for the plain chocolate batch. I had a partial bag of mini marshmallows and we googled some recipes and made up one we thought would do. Both batches turned out perfect and we limped off to bed at 3 am or so, vowing an early start on the meatballs, turkey, ham and cheese balls. Right!


So somehow we managed to get all the food going by about 1:30 pm and get the house looking nice and festive. Mark W was taking care of a lot of honey-do's and wrapping gifts and Anna had been playing quietly by herself in the family room waiting for the other kids to arrive. Kaish decided to take some pictures to show Milena and she walked into the family room to take a picture of the mantel and found that one of the wise men from the nativity had apparently swept Barbie off her feet and was planning to run off with her! We thought it was too funny so we had to leave it that way. When Fred got here he seemed to think the scene was a bit too risque and felt compelled to adjust the cleavage a bit.


For some reason I was surprised that this many kids can sound like a herd of elephants when they are racing up and down a 50' long tile hallway and running in a circle through the living room, kitchen, family room and back down the hallway. I had to enlist some helpers to get my presents wrapped so we could let them start opening them.

They kind of sat still for exactly as long as it took to take this picture. Poor little Anna was in bed with an earache by this time, so she is missing from the picture.
The hit of the year were the singing animals that Grandma Ruth got for all the kids from the Cracker Barrel gift shop. We heard about this from all the parents who got to listen to singing chipmunks and "YOU MAKE ME WANNA SHOUT!" all day long on Christmas day. I am thinking Mark and Kaisha will want to shout when they get to listen to that for 2,300 miles in the car. HA! HA!
Carter and David's first Christmas
Morgan says David "has candy cane clothes!"

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night's sleep, I sure need it!



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