BellaBlog

Archive for December 26th, 2008

Christmas 2008

As I write this, Bella and Paul are lying on the floor playing with Mr. Potato Head. I make a point of saying that they’re lying down because both of them are worn out already this morning.  After a long day of holiday celebration yesterday, all of us are not quite 100% this morning.  Grandma and Grandpa Lee and Great-Uncle John came in on Christmas Eve, Uncle Steve and Aunt Donna came in on Christmas day and we all had a joyous time yesterday.

Paul was off work on Wednesday and continued cleaning up the house for our guests.  I was home from work around 1:30 and began cleaning up as well.  I wasn’t home 15 minutes and the power went out and stayed out until about 3:30.  It’s hard to clean up when you can’t run a vacuum or turn on the lights to see what you’re cleaning.  By the time the power was restored, our guests had arrived but they were very forgiving about the house not be spotless:).  We had a quick dinner and headed to church to enjoy a quiet Christmas Eve ceremony and communion.  It had been a while since we’d been to one and we all really enjoyed it.  There was music, a video of the birth of Jesus, communion, lighting of the Christmas candle, candlelight circle around the auditorium and group prayer.  We were back home having cake and goodies in time for Bella to go night-night and start her sweet dreams.  Once she was in bed for the evening, Dada and Grandpa Lee went to work on building her kitchen and car.  Dad went to bed after finishing around 12:15am while I fell asleep on the couch about 11 and his parents went to bed about 11 as well.  Thankfully Bella slept until about 8am.

On Christmas morning, we all woke up and began a breakfast of chocolate croissants and coffee while letting Bella get a peek at her new little red retro kitchen.  We had the box for her ar out on the deck and she could see it thru the backdoor window.  She kept running back and forth between her kitchen and the box.  We put cookies in the oven of her kitchen and she loved stuffing the cookies in her mouth while she explored everything else in her kitchen.  Paul and I only thought it would keep her interest about 30 minutes and then we’d move onto the car but after a few hours, Bella was still in love with the many facets of her kitchen.  We finally moved onto the car we had kept in her play room (sunroom) and she was overjoyed yet again with this new addition to her life.  About 4pm Uncle Steve and Aunt Donna showed up and we began the making of Christmas dinner. 

We filled our day with talking with the family, enjoying Bella and how sweet she is and how much she loves being with her family.  We celebrated Carol’s birthday later that night and opened up our presents which means Bella didn’t go to bed until 9pm, she was great until her meltdown began.  I immediately picked her up and she began saying ‘peese’ but I couldn’t understand waht she was asking ‘please’ for.  It took me a few seconds to realize that she was actually asking to put her to bed because she was so tired.  What a sweet girl!  We put her to bed, said our prayers and she was out like a light tl 8am the next morning.  She did wake up crying twice but by the time we got down there to check on her, she had fallen back to sleep.  Now all of Paul’s family knows what all my family knows already-Bella is a perfect, beautiful and sweet baby girl.  Merry Christmas baby-you give us a sparkle in our eyes and joy in our hearts.