Christmas 2009

It's been a strange Christmas - overall it's been a disappointment for several reasons, enough so that I wasn't going to make a post here but as we all know life isn't always gumdrops and lollipops. The pictures I took were not very good or very many. I guess when you have certain traditions you have certain expectations and when they drastically change it's a disappointment, but inevitable I suppose. Things changed too much this Christmas - that's my view and I think Cheryl would agree.

I should've just took a vacation day on the 23rd, the day before Christmas Eve. Instead I worked this day until 12:30 a.m.. Then I had to do a little shopping at Wal-Mart after work. After this I didn't feel like wrapping presents so I just organized them so they would be ready to wrap the next morning and left them in a locked room. The next morning I found that Leah opened this room and Ben and Alex got into some of their presents, took them off somewhere, opened them up and played with them. They would not admit to this until I got really angry. So I started off this day mad and I still had presents to wrap when I would've just rather cancelled the day.


A picture of the kids on this day. A couple of them were not cooperative on all of them but this one.

Willie, Bruce, and Austin.

Opening presents on Christmas Eve afternoon for the first time (and hopefully the last) ever.


Smiling Ben.

Our parent's giftbasket.

So the 4 pictures above were at the Grandparent Foley's. Lori, Steve, and our new nephew Porter didn't make because of the possibility of bad weather. My mood was poor - I was still in a funk that I couldn't get out of and the ridicule I received as a result didn't make things better. I'm not good at pretending at all. Then the next day the kids opened the rest of the their presents and Cheryl cooked us a turkey dinner. We usually spend Christmas with Cheryl's side of the family but it just didn't happen this year.


Alex and Ben with their dart tag toys.


The rest of the kids on Christmas Morning.


Ryan and Jenna.

Scooter races.

Hopefully the children enjoyed Christmas - it seems like they did. We are spending our Christmas vacation switching the boys bedroom and dining room around - meaning the boys bedroom will be repainted and recarpeted and become the dining room, and the dining room will be repainted and become the boys room so they can have a bigger room.