10 things about our Christmas this year

1- My favorite family christmas activity this year was visiting the Midwest City Holiday Lights Spectacular. It was a drive through display set up in a city park decorated with millions of lights. Due to traffic, you had to drive through it at a crawl, but amazingly after 45 minutes my kids were still not bored of it. I loved the flashing lights that were set to music on their special radio channel, the Santa riding on the Loch Ness monster, and the forest of lighted deer, but my very favorite and most amazing part was that my kids all got along!!! They were happy! Singing together! Being nice! Wow! Definitely one of those times you wish you could bottle up to keep forever!

2- For Christmas this year we got a blizzard. In the spirit of giving, we decided to share our snow with the rest of the city. The snow started coming down on the morning of Christmas Eve and continued all day. The wind was whipping around like crazy out there and even managed to find a crack in our skylight and start snowing into our living room. Luckily most of our errands were done, because if we had saved things to do at the last moment, it would have been too late. We just hunkered down and enjoyed the snow. I read that in the last 106 years, there have only been 6 white Christmases in Oklahoma City. Inconvenient, yes. But what perfect timing.

3- As usual, we stuffed ourselves with home made lovin' fresh from the oven. Gingerbread houses, the Lyon family traditional cake that looks like I log that I always feel like an idiot saying the name for some reason, and cookies, cookies, cookies (we volunteered to make the treats for both Nina and Grant's school parties). As usual, I made a bunch of treats to give to neighbors and friends, Chocolate chip pumpkin bread, and most of them were eaten by us or just did not get delivered.

4- We had a great Christmas morning together. The kids actually managed to stay asleep until at least 7:30 am this year- a record I think. There was lots of oooing and ahhhing and even dances of joy. Everyone was happy with what they got and excited about what they gave. Minimal fighting and impatience. What more can you ask for?

5- On Christmas Eve I was reaching out of bed to get Meg for a 5 am feeding and OUCH! My back! I felt like a senior citizen hobbling around all day- when I could move enough to hobble. Dave was so kind and took care of everything, and two days later I feel almost back to normal again, but much older somehow.

6- Due to the snow our Christmas plans were thrown all up in the air. We had been looking forward to driving to Kansas to visit Grammy and Gramps and all the rest of the Lyons the day after Christmas. The terrible road conditions cancelled that (or hopefully just postponed it?). I read that there are only 14 snow plows in all of Oklahoma City!

7- Speaking of things being thrown up, the kids have all gotten sick. We got some unique symptoms this year. Along with vomiting, coughs and sniffles, we also have red, blood shot goopy crusty eyes, and mysterious mouth sores and ear aches. Rachel even threw up all over Nina's new Leapster game thing that she got for Christmas-ugg. I am hoping that we have seen the worst of it and are all on our way back to health soon.

8- We visited the Christkindel Markt in Tulsa again this year at the beginning of the month. Honestly, we had fun last year, but, in my opinion, not enough fun to do it again. In the name of Tradition, Dave insisted we go this year.

9- Ladies Dancing (can't think of anything else- it's getting late)

10-Rachel asked today when we could have Christmas again. I guess it was a hit.