joy to the world...

ok. to be honest. i am completely overwhelmed by the amount of holiday stuff i feel i must share on my blog. ridiculously, utterly blindsided by the hundreds of photos, memories and magical moments i want to remember and relish and reminisce about...*sigh*...it's making it hard for me to even start. so. as i have done in the past...i will try and do a little bit at a time...like maybe once a day for a week. or maybe once every other day. we're still kinda in holiday mode here. at least i am. it's so hard to jump back into normal, daily life after a week of lazy, celebratory days.
anyways. to start things off...let's talk about christmas...the actual day...the 25th of december. seems like a good place to start.

it was chilly here...not as chilly as it has been (my birthday was frigid.) but still...cold enough that it induced much snuggling down underneath the covers...that is until elijah got impatient and wanted to get down and play (which was only about 5 minutes). john's niece also called around 7.30am to ask why we weren't at grandma's house yet...i think the word lazy was used in the conversation. the nerve. anyways...

after a hurried reading of the christmas story from the gospel of luke...
and an even more hurried opening of gifts...we headed over to elijah's grandparents house for breakfast. e was a bit too excited to eat much...he saw the presents he'd opened the night before (a post on that later) and simply wanted to play.
so...play we did...while watching the cheesy of all cheesy-ness disney christmas parade on tv. did i mention it was cheesy? well, it was. after the parade was over...it was naptime for e so back to the house we trooped, gifts in tow. elijah slept the afternoon away while john and i just kinda dinked around...cleaning up wrapping paper, washing three day old dishes...the usual.
after elijah's nap, we went for a walk over to john's parent's old house (which they still own and are renting out to friends) and picked oranges from the copious amounts of heavily laden trees. yum. we came back with a bucket full of citrus-y goodness, along with frosty noses and chilly fingers (especially elijah's since he refuses to wear gloves).
elijah and i visited the infamous, inflatable santa across the street (which he loves...for some silly reason. he's not scared of the ten foot tall, fake santa but he was very apprehensive about the "real" santa at the mall. weird, no?). the rest of the day, we just hung out at home, enjoying a restful evening of bad, made-for-tv christmas movies, popcorn and elijah's crazy antics. all in all, it was a nice day. nothing over the top...no huge meal to plan, cook and clean up after...a small number of gifts...just family. and that was nice. i definitely missed my family...but knowing that we'll all be together in hawaii in just a few short weeks helped ease the ache of homesickness. can't wait for that...

definitely much more to tell...
i promise...it'll be coming soon.