Just getting around to posting our Christmas 2014 pictures, and I'm sure you're thinking of course they're off doing lots of fun things with their time off. I wish you were right, however, in reality this house has been plagued with a whole lot of sickness instead. We've basically been sick the month of December, but it really kicked into high gear just before Christmas. We realized that Mark had been battling the flu - or I should say I realized it when for the last week or so he'd been telling me he didn't feel like eating much, when I woke up feeling the same way. I didn't eat for over 36 hours straight and for several days after would only pick here and there. Never good when Mom and Dad get sick, but Margot also caught the flu. On the 23rd she had a steadily increasing fever, was 101 when she went to bed, 102 when she woke up crying at midnight, and 103 when she woke up crying at 6am. Needless to say we were worried because if you ever hold a baby that has a high fever they are just SO hot - it is uncomfortable holding them even. Margot and I sat on the couch from 6am to 10am. She would not leave my side and just wanted to be held. She wasn't interested in watching tv or anything. So in the midst of that I called the pediatrician and got an appt for noon where they confirmed she had the flu and gave her some medicine which took about 48 hours to truly work.
So needless to say, our Christmas Eve and Christmas were a little quiet due to three of us not being at our best. We managed to all eat dinner together on Christmas Eve, watched some Polar Express, had some hot fudge sundaes, and were off to bed. Mark and I had to hit the basement to organize and wrap, and assemble. We were lucky that it didn't take us too long, though I can honestly say I was exhausted when we were done and we both quickly went to bed.
Here is a picture of our tree just before we went to bed. As you can see, Santa doesn't wrap his gifts in our house. There's plenty of wrapped presents underneath and all of it kept the kids busy. I have seen lots of questions this year online about does Santa wrap, or not, and always think it's so interesting what people decide to do. For us, this works well - because we have three girls there are many things that are/will be to share, and while I've heard people say this takes the excitement out of it, I'd say our whole "opening" process still takes more than an hour in the morning and the girls go from one present to the next of those unwrapped looking and talking about what they got...
It felt like we went to bed and two seconds later we were being woken up, which I guess is what happens when you don't feel well. But in reality we weren't woken up till 7am, when Sawyer came in our room to tell us it was Christmas and she could see presents under the tree from the top of the stairs. Kudos to her for not going downstairs. We both got up and went down with her where she excitedly checked out many of the unwrapped gifts. She desperately wanted to wake her sisters up, but we stopped her. Instead she went and got her stocking and went through that until about 7:30am when she decided she could wait no longer and went against our wishes to wake Isla up.
Isla came down, after clearly being in a deep sleep, and quickly got into the swing of things.
The girls spent some time looking at the Santa presents - our Anna and Elsa dolls were a big hit. Each sort of naturally claimed what would have been theirs had I wrapped them but understood they would have to share with Margot too. Sawyer then made sure to show Isla all the other things she had already checked out, including a rainbow maker which they now use as a night light at bedtime.
Eventually they were ready to pop into the wrapped presents and Sawyer started to hand them all out. Here she is with some drawing crafts from Grandma & Grandpa Harris:
And Isla opening her BIG present, which was a marble run
At some point Margot woke up and was still pretty out of sorts, though curious about all the presents under the tree and her sisters' excitement. She spent a good amount of time sitting on my lap just watching Sawyer and Isla have their way with the presents. She didn't have any interest in opening a single one of her presents, but Mark got her to sit down and start playing with one of Isla's presents.
When she got a little fussy we then walked her into the family room to see a big present she got from Grandma & Grandpa Harris. She's a big fan of choo choo trains and noticed it was a train right away. It piqued her interest enough that she let us put her on the train. We pushed her down the track and she burst into tears. In all fairness, this was not the first time she cried that morning...like I said, still out of sorts. Instead she watched Sawyer and Isla ride this all day who seemed ready and willing to claim it as their own. Since Margot has gotten better it is now one of her favorite things to do, and she often asks her sisters to take her in the basement to ride her choo choo.
After presents and playing for a bit we also let the girls know their other grandparents had gotten them one big joint gift that was waiting for them in the basement. Mark took them down and showed them their bounce house. This picture is post jumping for a bit. Also a big hit, this has worked well because the girls can go down and hit the on button, it blows up in about 2 minutes and when they're done they hit the button again for it to deflate. They do it on their own and we don't have to be there so sometimes they go for 15 minutes on their own.
I eventually brought Margot down, and she jumped for a minute...
...but then realized that I was no longer holding her (we have been inseparable since she's been sick).
The day was rather uneventful though I think enjoyable for the kids...the girls played with toys going from one to another and back again. As a result the house was pretty messy. But we couldn't escape the illness - Margot and I both took long naps, and Mark and I decided neither one of us had it in us to eat a proper dinner so we popped it in the freezer to save for another day. I'd love to say that after that we were done, but Isla ended up getting sick - we think with stomach flu as she threw up for two days. So we've spent a lot of time at home relaxing, doing things like organizing our play room for all the new toys and trying out our new marble run...
All of the kids love to put the marbles in and watch them go through the course. And the girls have also been doing their mosaics...
We managed to get out and see some friends earlier this week thinking we were on the road to recovery, but my coughing seems to have moved into my lungs and is feeling more like bronchitis, Mark went to bed/woke up today feeling sick to his stomach, and Margot had a 104 fever last night before bed. She woke up back down to 100 but it's going up again so I have a feeling we'll be back at the doctor tomorrow. Needless to say, we could have had a healthier start to 2015. But we realize it could be worse so we'll take it and just keep counting down till vacation and dreaming about relaxing with our toes in the sand.
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