Christmas was delightful. We started on Christmas Eve, after breakfast and showers and such. We dug the pile of presents out from behind the Christmas Rocking Chair and took turns giving each other presents. Cara loved the paper... and occasionally looked at her presents, too. She got tired and had to go down for a nap halfway through, but that gave Ryan and I a chance to play with our new toys. Between the two of us, we got books, and crafty things, and access to a gym, and a new keyboard with a wireless mouse, and a glorious food dehydrator. Yay!
After lunch, we drove to Idaho Falls. We got there just in time for dinner and chimes and kisses for Cara. It was a delightful evening. That night was wonderful, too. I slept deeply, in spite of Cara fussing two feet away from me. Apparently I slept better than half the other people in the house. Fortunately, they were under strict orders that Cara was to be allowed to sleep until at least 7. Otherwise we'd have all been up at 3 am. Blech!
Cara ruined it, though. She started crying at 6:45, loud enough that she woke me up. At that point there was no use in trying to get back to sleep, so I very graciously conceded the point and we all went out to open presents in our pajamas by the light of the Christmas tree. Cara was thoroughly spoiled, of course. She got so many fun toys... including a bookshelf complete with many books. The rest of us learned a lot about each other. Our gifts were homemade this year: Meghan and Merrill are proud of their initials and make some dang good cookies. Becky wants to keep everybody warm in the most beautiful way possible, and Susan decided that Christmas morning was the best time to tell everybody she had an affair with nature. (Sorry Rod... at least you still have Jill!) :) Actually, it was a beautiful wall hanging made of leather and sticks and feathers. I love it!
The rest of the day was spent killing bunnies, eating Santa's face, and going to see a movie in the theater for the first time in 6 months. (In case you haven't seen it, Blindside is amazing.)
All in all, it was a delightful holiday, punctuated by Cara's smiles, laughs, ability to sit up on her own, and her first tooth finally poking through on Sunday, as well as 6 dogs going crazy in the back yard, Grammy Cracker being beyond thrilled to have all her kids there, and a fun episode with knives and acid in which the girls totally put every boy in the house to shame.
Returning home was laced with feelings of satisfaction and anticipation for what the future might hold. Christmas is still exploded all over my living room, but I am slowly getting our lives put back together. Two days ago I washed our brand new flannel sheets and put them on our bed. They're big, and blue, and don't match, but somehow our relatively simple bed suddenly feels luxurious, and even though our apartment is a hole in a very nice wall, when I climb into bed I feel, a little bit more, like I am coming home.
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