The Drive Home
Our family spent the majority of Christmas Eve in the car, driving back home. We managed to keep them entertained,with minimal meltdowns and potty stops. To prepare for the trip, I made up a bunch of quart-sized bags with activities: pipe cleaners cut to different lengths, mini coloring books with a few crayons, sewing cards (Bug discovered she could sew two cards together), felt "paper dolls" with clothes, and popsicle stick puzzles (for future reference, these don't work very well in the car since they kept sliding around on the lap desk). They also spent lots of time playing with their iPods (Touches they received as hand-me-downs when Nana and Aunt S got iPhones) and watching Finding Nemo and Baby Einstein's Meet the Orchestra.
Only Goose and I went to church that night. We gave Monkey and Bug options, and they decided they would rather stay home and play with Daddy than have to face either sitting still through a service or playing in a nursery full of noisy kids. (By the end of a week in a house with 12 other relatives and of 5+ hours in the car, we could tell our active little introverts had reached their limits. Goose, who may be the lone extravert in our family, had no objection to the nursery time.)
Merry Christmas!
For Christmas morning we all snuggled up on the couch to watch Charlie Brown's Christmas before heading to church. And this time we all went to church together, just a short, casual service with lots of Christmas carols accompanied by guitar music. After church we opened our family Christmas gifts and had a viewing of Rudolf the Red-nosed Reindeer later that afternoon. After all the excitement of Grandma and Granddad's house and before all the excitement of Daddy's side of the family coming here, it was nice to have a "quiet," relaxing family Christmas (quiet being a relative term--it still involved the entourage playing a glockenspiel!)
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