O Holy Night, I Sit Here Quietly Blogging...

So here I am on Christmas Eve typing in my blog. Does this demonstrate my dedication to recording my personal comments, or is it just pathetic?

Don't answer that.

My wife's just left to start her midnight shift at the hospital, the three little kids are asleep, and my folks are here, the teenagers are here, and we're just chilling.

Actually, it's been so busy around here lately, I haven't had a chance to post, or else when I DID have a chance, there wasn't a friggin' computer available. Teenagers.

First thing, we actually did finish that Simpsons puzzle. Day five was the day. Thank heavens for that big honking magnifying glass. My poor old eyes wouldn't have managed otherwise. Sadly, Day 6 was the day that the puzzle was disassembled. I fought that one tooth and nail. However, the voice of reason (ie. my wife's voice) won out. At least, I got one final photo for posterity.



Next thing, and I don't believe this is likely ever to be repeated in the annals of family history, but we took all five kids to the movies twice in three days. On Wednesday night we saw Narnia, and last night we saw Harry Potter. (Remember when I was determined not to take my four year old and possibly not even my eight year olds to Harry Potter? Well, we did it. And they loved it.)

Narnia, by the way, was amazing. I read all the books to the kids, and so there were no surprises, but I was really impressed by how well it adapted to the screen. In fact, I was even more impressed with the movie than I was by the book in some spots. Somehow the movie managed to really convey the scope of the story in a way I never got by reading the books.

Anyway, here we are. My wife won't get home from work until around 830am, and we are going to (please hold your laughter) try to hold off the children from coming in the living room to see if Santa has arrived until then.

I haven't figured out how to keep the kids' heads from exploding yet, however.

We thought about drugging them. The four year old is already sleeping with the benefit of Tylenol Cough and Cold formula, thanks to a nagging cough that had me sitting up with him at 5am this morning so he could sleep, because he coughed too much lying down. (Whoops, tangent, sorry.) In any case, we figured we could pretend they all had a cough, and drug them all. But then (and I admit we were getting a little punchy at this point) we worried that if we gave them too much, they might sleep until Boxing Day. And we would have to *pretend* it was still Christmas Day. Then, later on, we would have to tell them that school was starting back up a day early, and then it would go on and on... so we abandoned that plan. (Note to new parents: Don't really drug your kids for your own convenience... unless it's *really* important!)

Oh, finally, we also took a 'Christmas' picture of the five kids to send out by e-mail with our annual Christmas message, and just in the nick of time since it's Christmas eve and all. But here it is.



Merry Christmas.