Christmas at the Milligans. This whole season has been rather disorganized for our family. Never did seem to get ahold of things. We did end up hanging our beautiful wreath in the front door archway, the lights were already up in the eaves from last year, and we bought a new artificial tree that we managed to get up early in the month. But that's about where it ends. I'll just take a moment to say that those reading probably think this post is made with much grumpiness, but in truth, it is completely hilarious to me that we never got any further than we did with decorating for Christmas. No stockings hung by the chimney with care - just sitting in a pile on top of the mantle. We did get the decorations down from the really, really high storage area in the garage, but...well...they never did make it onto the tree. It's a good thing our new tree is pre-lit because otherwise it would have been completely naked. :) I guess the good news is that we don't have much to break down after the holidays.So why so much disorganization? Well, the church Christmas program would be one really big reason. Since I am the Primary pianist and the ward choir pianist, I ended up doing 6 musical numbers for those groups. Additionally, I accompanied one of the sisters in our ward who sang a solo she had written for piano, flute, and voice. It was BEAUTIFUL! There was a women's group that did Mary's Lullaby and I accompanied them, and was also asked to write parts for flute and violin, which I think turned out very nice, if I do say so myself. Then finally I did my own piano solo - an arrangement I wrote of Silent Night a couple of years ago. Needless to say there were many rehearsals and lots of writing and practicing. Whew! Nine musical numbers! I am so glad that's over. But it did sound really nice when all was said and done.
We weren't able to have the boys on Sunday night when we went over to my dad's for a family celebration, but I'm undecided about whether that was a blessing or a curse. It was sad they didn't get to play with all the cousins and see Grandpa & Grandma. But it was also very nice not having to remind them to mind their manners and stop running around their house. :)
We went over to my brother's on Christmas Eve day for a luncheon with my mom and the rest of the family. This time we did have the boys with us and we all had a great time. We were sad we missed Tris and Kris, but we had to leave earlier than we would have liked in order to get the boys back to the X-Men's house on time for their Christmas Eve plans.
After we dropped the boys off, we headed straight to Cafe Rio to pick up our traditional Christmas Eve Mexican food. :) Actually, Cafe Rio is one of our favorite spots and we didn't feel like cooking on Christmas Eve, so we stopped there. Much to our disappointment, they were already closed at 5:30 PM. Bummer. So we drove aimlessly around for a bit trying to think of something that would be close to satisifying. We ended up going to Chili's and doing takeout, which we brought home and ate as we watched a movie while bundled up in a blanket. The film was Kingdom of Heaven. It was interesting but extraordinarily long, so I can't give it really high ratings.
We woke up Christmas morning (slept in) and wrapped all the Christmas presents. Did I mention that despite having all of the Christmas shopping done by Thanksgiving, we didn't get around to wrapping any of the gifts? So there we were at the kitchen table Christmas morning wrapping all the presents for the boys and the family.
The boys arrived around 1:00 PM and we had Christmas "morning". This year's Christmas was all about gaming. The family got a new gaming computer, which means we won't have one boy playing with three boys huddled around offering advice to the player. Now we can have one boy playing on each of the two machines with only one other boy "coaching". The rest of the gifts were all about the Wii, PS2, and new DS's.
Things were going very well until around 4:30 PM when we lost power because of the big storm. A call to Rocky Mountain Power informed us that the power was expected to be out until around 9:30 PM. Hmm, how does one entertain 4 boys for 5 hours in the middle of a power outage on Christmas? They did okay until the batteries went dead in their DS's. By then it was pretty much completely dark in the house. I had lit a couple of candles, but they weren't doing much in the way of providing adequate light. I roped Tom into reading to them for a while and after that I got them to join me for a game of Disney Trivial Pursuit by flashlight. Gage creamed us all.
By that point it was 7:30 and we were losing control of what was becoming a rather loud and rambunctious group of kids. We decided an outing to the District for a movie was in order. After finally deciding on one (Tom and I weren't really anxious to see anything) we loaded up the kids in the car. I was literally starting to put my shoes on when the power came back on. Ah, blessed electricity. Since Tom and I weren't keen on the film we were going to see, we hauled all the boys back in and told them we weren't going to see a movie, but the Wii, PS2, and DS's were all available and now fully functional.
Now I have to go back and say that a few minutes before the power outage, Tom and I discovered Guitar Hero - one of the games we got for Christmas. OH MY GOSH!! What an incredibly fun game!!!! We were disappointed because we couldn't play when the outage hit. So we made up for it afterward...until about 1:30 AM for the boys, 2:30 AM for me, and 3:15 AM for Tom. VERY addicting.This morning I was proud of myself for displaying enough restraint to shower and brush my teeth before going downstairs to start playing Guitar Hero again. Tom joined me after returning home from taking the boys back to the X-Men. We pretty much did nothing but play Guitar Hero all day today. I cannot believe how fun that game is! I had to pull myself away to cook dinner. It was a good excuse for a break because my hands are all cramped up. :)
Needless to say, I am very much enjoying my time off of work for the holidays.
