Merry Christmas, everyone!

On this, the second third fourth day of Christmas (time flies; it's taking me forever to find the time to finish this post!), I wish you all a very Merry and Blessed Christmas season!

If you have been checking in here occasionally, you've noticed I haven't blogged since Wednesday. That's because Wednesday was my last day with more than two free minutes put together.

Warning: The rest of this ridiculously long post is going to be about nothing more than my family's Christmas; I'm mostly writing this for the benefit of a very dear friend (hello, D.!) who wrote on her Christmas card that she loves to be the "fly on the wall" in our home, via this blog. So, come back tomorrow if you're looking for more of a bloggish post. I've got some good ones in the hopper, I promise.

Thursday the 23rd was my dad's birthday. So I bopped over to my folks' house with a little gift (fruitcake, if you must know; he's one of the few people on the planet who actually loves it).

On the way there and back, I had 30 bazillion errands to run.

The best errand I had was to Toys R Us, because it was there that I had a "Miracle on 34th Street" moment. There's one of those every year. It's when you finally, after days or weeks of fruitless searching, find the gift you've been searching for, the one gift that will really make the kids' eyes light up, they one they really, really want, the one that makes you feel that you really and truly are Santa Claus. One year it was wooden nutcrackers, for our two little girls who wanted to be ballerinas and wanted nothing for Christmas except a tutu and a nutcracker. A few years later, it was the "Furreal Kitty", a gift which was so popular that nobody, but NObody, had it. I was with the kids in the mall one day when we overheard a clerk tell a frazzled shopper that they didn't have any, hadn't had any for weeks, that nobody else had them either. I just smiled, because I had managed to score two of them (albeit at a premium price), just days earlier.

And it was worth it, because on Christmas Day, when our girls opened up those gifts, they knew there really must be a Santa Claus. To this day, our daughters don't know how I did it, and even though they no longer believe in Santa, I won't tell. I figure there should always be a little mystery about Christmas. (And if you're wondering, I obtained the "Furreal" kitties through completely legal means. Let's just say, thank goodness for the Internet. But I'm not ruling out the help of St. Nick; sometimes, I believe in Santa Claus myself...)

This year, the elusive gift was a coach-and-horses set to go with the Barbie Princess-and-the-Pauper set. (A side note: The creative minds at Mattel are evil, eeeeeevil. Every year they come up with a new Barbie-as-a-princess doll, like Barbie-as-Rapunzel, or Barbie-in-Swan-Lake, or Barbie-as-Cinderella. Well, this year, they managed to come up with the Princess and the Pauper theme, so of course you have to buy the two dolls. What good is just the Princess, or just the Pauperess, if you're going to play out the whole story? Evil, I tell you. I can hear them laughing right now... an eeeeevil laugh... bwahahaha!!!)

Anyway, I found the coach and horses at the Toys R Us on 27th Street. Had searched at least four other stores and come up empty handed. But now I had it, and I was so happy that I didn't even mind standing in line forever (I picked the slowest one, of course). And sure enough, on Christmas morning, that was the gift that elicited the biggest gasp of surprise and delight from our little five year old daughter.

What was the point of this post again? Oh yes, "Why I Haven't Blogged Since Last Wednesday". So, The Great Toy Find was Thursday. Then, on Friday, Christmas Eve, we made our traditional trek to a Chicago suburb for my husband's family get-together. I love it. First, "midnight" Mass at 3 p.m., then a party at my sister-in-law's house. The highlight of the evening is when the doorbell rings and all the little ones jump up and run to the door; they know that Santa always leaves a bag of gifts on the front porch, with a little something for each of the kids. When I first joined the family 18 years ago, there were lots and lots of little kids rushing to the door. But as the years went by, the number of "believers" dwindled, and now, the only ones hurrying to try to catch a glimpse of Santa are my two little ones and one of the great-grandchildren. We need more of those grown grandchildren to get married and start their families to add to the numbers of children running when the doorbell rings again!

And finally, Christmas. Our seven-year-old son woke up at 5:00, nearly out of his mind with excitement: "Mom!!! It's Christmas!!! Santa! was! here!!! I can tell! He left decorations in my room!!!!" Since I hadn't gotten to sleep until about 2:00 in the morning, this was far too little sleep for me. So, I convinced him to go back to bed until it was at least light outside, and he finally drifted off again. At 8:30, the three girls all woke up, and that was it: Christmas morning had officially arrived. Our oldest peeked out a window: "It's snowing! Little flurries!" I'm a sucker for a White Christmas, so this delighted me as much as it did the kids.

The children waited, only a little impatiently, in the hallway while husband and I performed our morning ablutions (I never thought I'd have a chance to use that phrase, but there it is), and we all descended. They rushed into the family room, and the frenzy began. How can weeks of planning, thinking, searching, ordering, buying, and wrapping, all be over in a few minutes of ecstatic paper-tearing and package-opening?

Our dear friends from Madison stopped by; we had a mug of hot buttered rum (recipe to be posted here shortly; now there's a good reason to stop by here again soon!)

Then my family all arrived for Christmas dinner. We always have a wonderful time together; there's lots of talking (the decibel level gets a little out of control at times, but it's "good loud") and laughing. I'm blessed with two great parents and three terrific brothers and two delightful sisters-in-law and five wonderful nieces and nephews, all of whom I love very much, and all of whom get along famously. Is this too good to be true? Well, it's good, and it's true, so I guess it's not too good to be true.

We said a prayer before dinner, and "Happy Birthday, Jesus!" He is the one true gift for all of us; His birthday is truly something to celebrate. When you stop to think about that, you realize that all the festivities, all the shopping, decorating, feasting, gift-giving, are fitting. There's no better reason to be joyful.

Later that evening, the snow changed from little flurries to big, fat, fluffy flakes. "Cotton balls", as the 14-year-old put it. You know the end of "White Christmas", when they throw open the doors and it's snowing those huge Hollywood flakes? Well, it was like that. So I threw open the front door, and we all admired the beauty of the snow drifting down, illuminated by the spot lights on the front lawn.

And that was our Christmas Day.