Christmas Eve 2007

Christmas eve started with last minute gift buying and running from place to place. Unfortunately, the sickness that seemed to be leaving the boys and myself seemed to be hitting Mia on Christmas eve. Up until then she has been kind of sick with a cough and not really being herself, but on Christmas eve, she really started to become FUSSY-- I MEAN REALLY FUSSY!!! Before her major fussiness began I took her shopping with me and her cute pinafores came in the mail from LassyGirl and they turned out so darn cute I put her in one for the day.

Our family has a tradition of attending the Christmas Eve service at our Church Pomona First Baptist and then going back to my parents house for Soup and gifts. Those in attendance are always our family, my brother and his family, my parents, my sister and my grandparents (who by the way are 90 and 91 and in wonderful health and still drive all around :). We keep it small (it doesn't sound small but it is for us) so we can have a more intimate time.

As previously mentioned, Mia was not feeling well. At the Christmas eve service she was not happy. Kevin had to take her out most of the time and when she was there she was mostly fussing. It was a great service with music and the traditional candle lighting ceremony. We have been going to our church since I was a little kid and I attended the school part of the church from Kinder to 8th grade. When Kevin and I were 16 years old we met in our Church youth group. We started dating then and have been together ever since- almost 20 years ago-- wow are we getting old. Anyway, our church is very special to our family and we love and appreciate it's ministry. It is a very large church but feels small. It is all around a WONDERFUL church. Back to Christmas eve- our church has a tradition of one single candle lighting the candles all around the church. You can see the light spread throughout the sanctuary and it is spectacular. The little kids get glow sticks but overall it is a tradition the boys look forward to each year and it was fun to watch Mia stop fussing for a short bit of time while watching the light spread. The first collage is of Mia basically doing what she did during the service. The second collage is of the kids and Kev with their candles.

The next collage is of us once we got back to my parents house. Brad and Amy made a ton of food and Kevin helped. We all enjoyed sitting around my parents huge dinner table (sits like 16) and laughing together. After dinner we adjourned to the family room and began getting things ready for dessert and presents. The tradition is that my dad reads the Christmas story from the Bible but this year he wanted Ethan to read it. It caught Ethan off guard but he was happy to comply and read us the whole Christmas story. Ethan is a great reader so he did a wonderful job. After the Christmas story we sang Happy Birthday to Jesus and began opening gifts.

I felt so badly for Mia. She was just so not herself. During dinner she was fussing so much that I took her upstairs (after heavily medicating her) and tried to lay down with her. She laid there and calmed down but did not sleep. After about a half hour I brought her back down and she was fine for a few and then started fussing again. I finally went out to the car and got the ERGO (thank the Lord for the ERGO!!) and put her in it for the rest of the night. She seemed much better once in the Ergo and was relatively calm the rest of the night. Not sure what she had but the fussiness continued for through Christmas Day (more to come later).