Rozelle Christmas 2012 is officially packed up and put away as of tonight. Alas, there are no pictures of value to post (my siblings snagged all of the photobug genes).
My girls were great. So much fun and so sweet. They loved their cameras, their gift from us that they opened before our trip. Molly's has a lot of oomph and Anna's has a lot of pizzazz. Anna's also came wrapped with rechargeable batteries. The one drawback of her camera (besides the fact that she can add a tweeting bird or barking dog sound effect when snapping a picture - not a drawback in her book in the least) is that it takes batteries. She's pretty much a tweeting, barking paparazzi so those batteries wear down fast. No one could have anticipated that she run them down before our car had officially exited New York.
We kicked off the festivities with Christmas Eve at my aunt and uncle's house and ate ourselves into food comas as well as caught up with cousins we see once a year, meeting a new little one too. The rest of the time we split between mine and Jeff's parents. One of the best things about the trip was the cousin bonding that took place. It was amazing to see how the 5 kids on my side of the family stuck together like glue, from 14 1/2 year old Collin to 1 1/2 year old Jovie. Kristy is probably secretly glad her family lives in DC - every time Jovie said "Eh" and held out her arms or pointed her finger, many sets of hands were there to swoop her up and get her what she wanted. She quite enjoyed being one of the cousin crew. And she adored "Bishkit." He received a record number of hugs and kisses.
It snowed in Dayton the day after Christmas, so technically it was not a white Christmas. It was a lot of snow for Dayton (oh, Dayton - you have NO idea what snow is. Syracuse easily has double of what you had on the ground when we left!). This was Jovie's first snow and my nephew Brayden was worried that it would all melt away. (That happens in Dayton. Not so much in Syracuse. My kids were not worried in the least). Between my parents and my sister Kelly, we dug up enough snow gear for all and headed out with sleds to a hill. Jovie was practically immobile inside her snow clothes stuffing, but made it clearly known that she wanted to ride down the hill repeatedly. Someone would take her down the hill, she would kind of lie there and grunt "EH!" and hold her arms out. Someone would scoop her up and ask "Do you want to ride down the hill again, Jovie?" and her little head would bob and her face would light up and she would answer, "Yesh! Yesh!" Biscuit seemed to question how responsible it was to allow the baby to go down the hill on the sled and would often run over and sniff her when she got to the bottom to make sure she was okay.
Not to ignore Jeff's family. We spent a lovely, quiet Christmas day with Jeff's parents. The girls each opened up a book and a game from us, and we spent the morning eating Grandpa's breakfast casserole and playing the new games. Grandpa took the girls to a movie and Jeff and I got to rare privilege of going to a movie by ourselves. We came back and had cheese fondue and then Molly played Christmas music for us on the violin and Anna read the Christmas story. We finished the evening with "It's a Wonderful Life" - Anna handled it MUCH better than her sister did at the same age:) Jeff's sister and family came later in the week and we celebrated with them then.
After a solid week of Christmas celebrating with family, we met up with the Dresslers, Dericos, and Shellhammers at the Dressler's. Anna lives for playing with those kids - really. I think she just loses herself in a wonderful world of imagination and adventure with them. We did not actually spend New Year's Eve with them this year, which was a little sad, but the girls and I had to report back on January 2. Molly somehow managed to talk us into a sleepover at our house. Jeff and I made it to 12:01.
Anna loves so many of her new things, and this is the first year I see her really enjoying new toys this way. She has built all of her new Lego sets and played all of her new games, etc. One of her favorite things is not actually a gift. It's the old Gameboy she found when we were cleaning a closet on New Year's day. She asked if she could take it to after-school care for "DS time." I said ok. She came home and said, " You know, everyone used to be all about so-and-so's IPod but now they all want to see my Gameboy." So much funny stuff I don't even know where to begin. I do need to include that Molly said, "I wouldn't even take that Gameboy to school when I was in elementary school because everyone had DS's and stuff THEN!" Contentment + Confidence = Infectious Happiness.
It's back to work, school, and activities. Back to eating more healthily and exercising. I tell the girls that Christmas wouldn't be special if we had it all of the time and that in fact, we would be sick to death of it. It warms my heart to know that they tuck away their Christmas memories fondly in their hearts and minds.
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