This was our first year to have a non-believer in our household. Partly because of that, and partly because I wanted our kids to have more tangibly participate in our charitable giving, we found a project we could all do together. We bought "home kits" for refugees being housed in the Salt Lake City area. We all went to the store together and found the items on the list. The refugee group also requested Beanie Babies animals for the children. I wanted each of my kids to choose an animal to donate. The store didn't have what we needed, but I knew they were carried at my local grocery store, so we headed over there. The boys chose Minion-branded Beanie Babies. Trixie chose Skye from Paw Patrol, which I think she has only seen once. All she knew was this stuffed animal was a pink doggy, and she wanted it.
Now, I made it very clear that these toys were NOT FOR OUR FAMILY. They all repeated it many times. Everyone seemed to understand this concept. The toys were set aside with the home kits, and they were not played with. A few days later I had time to take the donations to the center in Salt Lake City. I let Trixie hold "her" pink dog on the way up, and I let her come in to deliver it. She willingly gave it to the lady but seemed a little confused as to why she wasn't giving it to another kid since I'd been telling her ever since we picked them out that these toys were for other kids.
Then she cried the whole way home about her pink dog and demanded several times that I return to the refugee center and retrieve it. I did not.
After that she started telling us that Santa was going to bring her a pink doggy, and he did.
The dog has hardly left her side since Christmas morning. She even took it with her for her surgery a few days after Christmas (ear tubes in, adenoids out).
The boys woke us up bright and early Christmas morning. We made the awake kids line up on the stairs before coming down.
We had a nice time opening presents. I always let the kids choose things for everyone in our family at the dollar store. This year Ike used some of his own money to buy a nicer gift for Felix, and it was sweet to see him get so excited about giving a gift. I think next year we may do a name exchange and allow the kids to buy each other nicer things. (I may be sick of dollar store trinkets filling up my house.)
Felicia got some real presents, including a book about her first year. She also recieved that little blue bouncy hours, and she's rather afraid of it.
But what Felicia most loved was the domino she found under the couch. She carried it around all morning.
After breakfast at home, we went to Eric's grandma's house and hung out with Eric's brother, Andrew, and Eric's brother, Nathan, and Nathan's family.
Eventually we headed home and had our traditional dinner of chicken biryani with Andrew and with my friends, Priscilla and Joey.
Our post-Christmas break included lots of board gaming. Trixie had her surgery somewhere in there. We had a game night with Eric's cousins, and a game day with another cousin and his wife along with Janssen and Bart. We had previously celebrated New Year's Eve with this same group, pre-kids. We all toasted to no kids in 2006, and we all succeeded in no kids until 2010. We weren't together on New Year's Eve exactly this year, but I'm pretty sure we all could have toasted to no kids in 2019. (We have 11 kids between the three families. It was a little chaotic, but lots of fun.)
Eric's sister and her family come for a visit. (No pictures!) We stayed up way too late playing games.
It was hard to go back to real life when the break was over.
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