Christmas

In Gregory’s family there was the tradition of siblings sleeping under the Christmas tree and playing Uno (or HUNO, as Mr. Sneaky Pants refers to it) together into the late hours of the night during the Christmas season. Sarah heard about it, so we told her that she and Mr. Sneaky Pants could sleep under the tree on Christmas Eve. They had a marvelous time reading from the Christmas book basket, and after being implored to go to sleep many times by their father, after a few hours they actually did drift off to slumber, long past normal bedtime. They were up before six o’clock, telling me that it was time to check their stockings. I made them wiat until at least six thirty. They weren’t very happy about that, and I was not the popular parent of the early morning hours.

At our house Santa brings breakfast, and a small toy that fits in our stockings. Sarah desperately wanted a rag doll, or a Raggety Ann doll, and Santa was AWFULLY worried that he might have to sew one himself (not good with the sewing machine, that Santa) but at the last minute, he found one in a nearby shop, so catastrophe was averted.

After a great deal of present opening that seemed to last forever for the adults in the family, we started cooking Christmas dinner: ham and cheesy potatoes. However, becaues we aren’t very organized, dinner wasn’t actually done until three o’clock in the afternoon. It worked out nicely, though . . . we snacked on fruit and other things and just ate one large yummy meal.

In the late afternoon we tried our hand at the monster sledding hill at Holy Rosary school. In the summer we often walk down to that school because their parking lot has a truly amazing view of Lake Superior. On Christmas we drove down with our sleds. The view was stunning, of course, the white glazed sledding hill stumbling down and far, far beneath it the giant lake shrouded in grey. It takes your breath away. Then you hop on your sled and your breath is REALLY taken away. The hill rivals the hills in the gulches where I used to go sledding as a teenager, only minus the large rocks and drop offs that can be really dangerous. The hill is steep. And fast. And I thought for sure my preschoolers would be terrified. So did Gregory. But they were convinced they wanted to go down together without a grown up on the first run.

We let them. And man, did they zoom down. Wow. When they finally stopped at the bottom Gregory hopped on his sled and expected to find bawling kids. (Don’t worry, we tied Hannah’s sled to the fence so she didn’t go down at all). When he got to the bottom, Mr. Sneaky Pants’ face was covered with blood, but it turned out he had just bitten his lip on the way down and he was screaming, “that was so fun! Let’s do it again!” They thought it was spetacular, except for the long, slow climb up to the top of the hill.

I was the only one who had any kind of a sledding catastrophe the whole day. I lost control of my sled and creamed a brave little boy. I felt so bad, but he only cried for a few minutes and then ran off to a less steep area.

After all that activity, and the extreme lack of sleep Christmas Eve night, The Banana and Mr. Sneaky Pants fell asleep in the car and had a nice rest on the ride home. We put them right into their beds and relaxed the rest of the night.