Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve was fun, mostly.  Although he was feeling perfectly fine the night before, when he woke up that morning Michael was feeling quite sick, and we just attributed it to having stayed up late.  He toughed it out and took the boys out in the back yard to play in the snow.  He got a kick out of Brax fetching the sled like a giant frisbee (especially since we had tried to play frisbee with Brax once before with an actual frisbee, and he wouldn’t have anything to do with it).  Isaac didn’t want to go out in the snow, so he stayed inside and helped me make the dessert for Christmas dinner.  When everyone came inside we made lunch and hot chocolate, and I couldn’t find Courtland or Lijah anywhere – I finally found them both asleep in their seats at the table waiting for lunch.  Michael was feeling much worse after he came inside.  He was having chills and a fever, so I told him that he needed to get some antibiotics for strep throat right away – Michael gets strep once a year, often right around Christmas. 

And he never presents like a normal strep case, but the strep test always comes back positive.  So, he called in a prescription for himself, and I went and picked it up while the younger boys were napping.  Michael then got some rest and tried to get over it.  We relaxed around the house and then we went out driving to look at Christmas lights.  I heated up the car and then I drove, while Michael huddled under a blanket in the passenger seat.  We came home and had dinner, and decided to postpone many of our normal Christmas Eve traditions until the next day.  The boys did open their gift from Santa – an “I Spy” puzzle.  It was a puzzle of all different old wooden blocks, and it ended up taking longer to put it together than we’d thought, but it was fun.  I wanted Michael to go to sleep, but he was

feeling a bit better at that time and didn’t want to leave me to do everything myself that night.  The boys left out cookies, some reindeer food (this year it was barley), and a picture and packet of school worksheets that Eli wanted to give to Santa.  The boys also enjoyed setting out their gifts for the family members under the tree.  After we got them in bed, we got out the other gifts and filled the stockings.  Michael headed up to bed and I stayed up a bit longer having fun taking some pictures of the tree.  Then it was off to bed . . .