Christmas Day

Irony:  Making it all the way through the Advent season with fire-obsessed kids wildly wielding lighters around highly flammable wreaths, daily experimenting with diverse ways of extinguishing flames with body parts and random objects, physically fighting over who got to blow out which flame when, and running around lighting a multitude of Christmas candles in every room of the house over and over and over ----- only to have the fire in our kitchen this morning be actually caused by the heating element in the oven popping and splitting into 2 pieces.

This was really our second breakfast catastrophe of the day.  Every year I make homemade cinnamon rolls for Christmas morning, so yesterday I had spent (it felt like) all day making Cinnabon-style ones.  But due to a few different events which I will not go into now (but include a rush getting ready for company for Christmas Eve, a late-ending church service, an early-arriving Russian student, a forgetful baker, and a mud room), I ended up having to throw both pans away.  Sad.  Pete made a different breakfast instead -- or attempted to anyway.

Christmas Eve food

So our Christmas Day started with a fire -- and ended with a lizard running loose through the dining room -- but the middle parts were quite good anyway.

Watching the kids open their gifts this morning was truly delightful.... they were all grateful and excited and content and all the things we wish them always to be.  We heard things like, "A dream come true!' and "This is the best Christmas ever!" and "I LOVE it!!  I'm not sure what it is..."  and "Yes! Yes! Yes!"

Then, when all the unwrapping was done and the excitement was starting to subside, we told them we wanted to take a family walk (in this lovely 70-degree weather), so we gave them some specific instructions of some chores to do before we left. ("Strider, go take the laundry out of the dryer," "Rayna, go get the mop to do the floor," "Cole and Miles, go to the sock box and match up some socks.")  They, for once, all completely obeyed, and when they got to those spots, found that they each had one additional present!  (Well, actually Rayna found that the mop hadn't been put away where we thought it was, so she actually started mopping the floors before we realized it.  We finally diverted her to the closet where she found her gift.)

We had, of course, saved the best for last, so now we got to hear things like, "You just made the Best Christmas Ever even better!"

Couldn't ask for better reactions.

We had originally planned to go to Mom and Dad's for a big Christmas event, but Mom was sick, so we decided to go to the Clarks' instead.  We roped in John and Keiko and their kids as well, and they brought Mor-Mor over, so we had a nice little afternoon playing a game and letting the kids frolic.  And because whenever 2 or more Wrays gather, there the Dreschers will be among them, we also got to visit with them as well!  It was almost a complete sibling party... only Dan and Amy and their kids didn't make it.

BUT, on the way home we got invited to come have dinner with them!  This was such a treat -- not just because it meant we got to see the whole Wray clan in one day (minus Mom and Dad), but also because they made a totally awesome meal and it was WAY better than we would have been able to come up with with our busted oven!

So it was a very good, complete, happy day -- fires, lizards, and all.