Christmas Recap, Year-end Review

Well, this is it! Tonight we bid farewell to 2009 and ring in a whole new decade!

I have spent the week of Christmas (and, frankly, every other week in December) sick as a dog...so this is a late post-Christmas recap.

This year, Christmas was a little more low key than usual - because of this crazy sickness, whatever it is. Christmas Eve was beautiful, we had Chinese for dinner (an annual thing...) and went to the beautiful mass. McKinley was so good sitting through the hour long service, and as usual, he loved going up to receive communion with Cary and I. This time, he even REALLY got into kneeling! It was so cute.

After Church we came back home for some egg nog (for McKinley) and coffee (for me and Cary) and drove through Deming Park's annual Christmas in the Park display (along with everyone else in Terre Haute). The LONG wait in bumper-to-bumper-at-a-crawl traffic was made magical by McKinley's audio book of 'The Polar Express'. It was wonderful.

We made it home just in time to finish decorating Santa's cookies. So we set out Santa's plate and cup (complete with those yummy cookies and milk) and threw in some PREMIUM M&M's for the reindeer. Do you know that the reindeer ate ALL of those M&M's? Santa ate everything too...clearly they were all hungry! Santa only left a few crumbs! We read "The Night Before Christmas" as we do every year then sent McKinley off to bed so Santa would come to our house! The bearded-one really came through. McKinley scored!

Plasma Car, Power Wheels Jeep, puzzles, DVD's, games for his clickstart computer, Shake n Go Race Cars, a guitar and microphone, an RC car...there was so much I can't even name everything! Soon, Nonna came over to visit and we were all playing the Wii. We spent the day being low key, which was so nice, and ended the day with the most precious Christmas Concert performed by McKinley. He played his new guitar and sang into the microphone a myriad of Christmas and Children's Classics: Jingle Bells (with a very rock and roll twist), ABC's, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, and The Itsy Bitsy Spider to name a few.

I'm sure McKinley had wonderful dreams of Santa and his reindeer delivering all those wonderful presents. What a lucky boy. What a beautiful day to spend with my family.

Merry Christmas!

This time, my year end review is pretty simple. I'm still not feeling well and I've got much to do to get ready to send off '09 in Vernon Style. So, this year I just want to say how amazing it has been to be a wife, a mother, a daughter and a friend. I am thankful, so very very thankful, for everything and everyone who touches my life. This year our family has grown and changed in wonderful ways, met obstacles head on, and grown to love one another even more - if that's humanly possible.

I look forward to what a new decade brings our way.

Farewell 2009!

Lynn