Home for the Holidays

For the first time ever, I spent Christmas away from my family. James has had a series of setbacks in the way of illnesses and some food related stuff and we made the decision just a few days before Christmas to not risk ending up back in the hospital, because we now recognize the signs of that downhill slope. So we thought that if we stayed home and concentrated on really regular feedings and drinking, etc, we may be able to bounce back a little and work on gaining back the pound he had lost instead of...not.
Lots of people have said that it's so great to spend Christmas with just your little family and how it may become a new tradition. Um, yes we had fun. We made the best of things, we had a white Christmas, which was fun. But you see, our Texas Christmases are awesome. We hang out, laugh a lot, eat a lot of amazing food. There's no family drama or tension, despite the family band occasionally forgetting about small children sleeping during an impromptu concert. :) We all genuinely get along. Missing everyone made my heart hurt, and I mostly hated keeping my kids away from family they don't get to see enough and really looked forward to seeing.
But nothing can keep us down too much, and as long as I didn't think too hard about it, we had a great time.
Turns out, 2 days before Christmas, you can get a hell of a deal on a 12 foot tree:

And Target has awesome clearance sales as well!

See, traditionally, we celebrate a family Christmas about a week before the real deal since we are out of town. We did this and opened all the presents the day before we decided not to go. The above picture accurately depicts therapeutic overcompensation. Also, my wonderful mom promptly boxed all Texas presents and overnighted them to us.
And it snowed! Which of course it did in Texas too, and just about as much, so it worked either way:


Let's not pretend this isn't the best snowman you've ever seen. Also, we got TONS more snow than this later. And then the next day. And we will again tonight. I should probably make a new snowman...

We wracked up a solid 4 hours on FaceTime.

Got lots of Daddy time

And only tried to ship them in a suitcase once. Ok, twice.

And fortunately, James has started regaining some weight and seems to be feeling better overall! So we know the right decision was made, and I hope we never have to do it again!!!

The Dilemna

Since James was born, Christmas has been....hectic. The last thing on our minds has been decorating, etc because then we'd just have to clean it up and I have a hard enough time of that on a regular basis. We do a lot of living day by day around here. We also go to TX every year, so we don't want to put up a huge, live tree that will catch fire on our baseboard heaters while we're gone. Nobody wants to be that person. Don't get me wrong, we do presents, we have a small tree and our nativity scene and sing Christmas carols.
In addition to this, James has never had quite the right frame of mind for Santa. He didn't really understand conceptual things, and really, what's more conceptual than Santa? This is the first year he's sort of understood that Christmas happens on a certain day in the future. Time has been a tough concept to get too. So anyway, we just have never even thought about doing a whole Santa thing. And I don't think that's bad, because instead we talk about Jesus's birthday, which is actually what Christmas is. Also (disclaimer) I don't think your children will be damaged either way. Yada yada. BUT, at school, around other people, reading stories, everyone asks about Santa, and pretty much the kid has never even heard of him! Lol! I think strangers think I'm a mean mom without knowing the whole story.
Now with Eve I suppose we have an opportunity for a fresh start in that department, or we just decide that that ship has sailed. I think we've chosen the latter.
What I'm really trying to say here is: if your kids believe in Santa, and you'd like it to stay that way, I caution you against discussing it with my kids. They're gonna out you.

Rudolph, however...totally real.