Keeping It Simple...

Always fun to teach the newbies how to destroy wrapping paper!

Perfect. Now she can wreak major havoc without harming herself.

As usual, completely thrilled with something simple as long as she's with friends and being social.

The patriarch looks on like a life guard watching for children to drown in the wrapping paper remnants.

His first successful capture! The paper might not taste great but he'll eat it just to prove to everyone he can!

"Hmmmm.... I could smack you with this and then sit back and serenade myself to sleep since I haven't napped!"

Randolph girls try to help clean up the path of destruction. It looked like an F5 went through!

Here's where I made my most stupid mistake of the night! I should have made a run for the van and high tailed it out of the state! (Every time I see this photo, I think about that commercial where the grandparents run after the taxi screaming, "Don't leave us with the kids")! This was my golden opportunity and I missed it!

The boys... who knows what they were doing but this is probably the only picture we'll ever have of them all together without them holding signs saying "Cherokee County Sheriff's Office - Inmate number ....." The four of them together could do untold damage.

And then there's Pooh. Pooh is as old as I am. There are photos floating around of me as a toddler crawling all over him. He's been through quite a bit but he's managed to keep his honey pot and stand tall with dignity! I can't have Christmas without Pooh! (See my Facebook post to see how Annie finished him off for this Season).

So, there's the children's picture book edition of tonight. Now, I'm trying to figure out how to assemble the remaining items that Santa didn't assemble. (Next year, I'm hiring the elf from MIT with a Master's degree in engineering. The fruitcake I hired this year can't remember to make sure that the screwdriver is set to "screw" and not "unscrew" and spent an undetermined amount of time trying to figure out what the problem was and even thought the screws were the wrong size. Nope! Here's your sign)! Anyway, I've been so busy that I haven't had time to really get emotional about anything. I know it's coming but I'm hoping to hold it off until I can get things tied up here (literally - maybe with duct tape).

Every year, Grant has asked Santa to hide his gifts. ??? This doesn't make much sense to me. However, in an attempt to do things differently this year, all gifts have been wrapped, numbered, and hidden throughout the house. Each gift has a tag with a clue that leads to the next gift. Annie probably won't understand the "game" in having to hunt for her presents but I'm hopeful that the adventure will keep little minds occupied in the morning. (I'm also hoping that Dasha won't consider the oven a routine hiding place after finding one of her gifts there)!

So, as I tucked Annie into bed tonight, I had to promise her that Santa would NOT be entering the house AT ALL! I told her that he gave me the presents and I'm going to put them under the tree. (See how I'm hanging myself on this one? They won't be under the tree! They'll be in eight different places)! Anyway, I'm hopeful that she'll sleep because I know the big kids will be rolling out of bed especially early in the morning!

As I settled Dasha into bed tonight, she lobbed a question at me that I've waited seven years to hear from her. "Did I have a mom in Russia?" Come on, now! Why on earth does this need to be asked on Christmas Eve night and what in the world made her think of this now? We had a very simplistic conversation that I'm sure didn't even begin to fill the gaps that she's obviously suddenly realized exist. It's not that I mind telling her. I just needed time to prepare what I was going to say. She has NEVER asked about this before and we'd just kind of left it up to her. We didn't feel like we needed to purposely stir things up for her if she was content with the knowledge base she had. Ugh. I promised to have a more detailed conversation with her tomorrow. She's supposed to write down any questions she has. I don't know that this will work but it would sure help me. I'm sliding this issue to the back burner for the night, though. Maybe I'm wrong to do that but... She can just add it to the growing list of other things she can tell the therapist! :)

Good night, all!