For those of you who have missed the million times I’ve bitched about it, I have missed Christmas with LilZ for the last two years. I alternate Holidays every year with his Dad, but last year I sacrificed my Christmas to switch our alternating holidays to work with MrZ’s family’s holidays so LilZ could be a part of that as well. So - that gave me two years in a row that I didn’t have him for Christmas. Now - we fake it really well - we pick the first Saturday after Christmas and do everything like we would if it were Christmas, but I’ve been looking forward to this Christmas for the last 12 months. A real Christmas.

CHRISTMAS EVE

LilZ came back from his Dad’s house late Christmas Eve afternoon. I had made the decision to make this Holiday as “traditional” as possible to take advantage of the year. I’m a big fan of tradition and ritual and I was planning on milking the Holiday for all I could. NikkiZ and I had already painted ornaments that day, which turned out to be more fun than I thought. Evidently, she knows how to handle a paint brush. I was adequately surprised by that. She did like to mix and smear the paint more than actual painting, but considering she’s 2, it could have been a lot worse.

This is a look of pure toddler concentration. We see it often at our house. Especially when there is food involved.

After we picked up LilZ, we decided to first make cookies for Santa. We did this from a Crayola kit we bought at the grocery store. Which was actually more than I originally planned which was getting those tubes of sugar cookies you just slice and bake. I think LilZ was surprised that we actually had to mix something for these cookies. He may have even referred to them as homemade, and I totally didn’t correct him even though the only thing required was water.

NikkiZ and LilZ both played a part, with NikkiZ doing the stirring and LilZ doing the catching of all the crap NikkiZ flings when she stirs. It turns out that the mix may have been about 100 years old because the consistency was really off and we kept having to add flower to make it even remotely dough-y. (Hey! Even more homemade!) We rolled out the dough and cut our bear shapes. Then, MrZ and LilZ did the typical guy thing and made cookies shaped like certain body parts. That is part of the tradition, isn’t it? Boobie cookies? No? Oh well.

We baked the cookies and iced the bears and set them on a plate for Santa.

NikkiZ is all, “Dude. Why aren’t we eating these again?”

I had read earlier that day at Fluid Pudding about Magical Reindeer Food and knew that was a tradition I wanted to start with my kids. We didn’t have any glitter on hand, but we did sprinkle the oatmeal in the front yard. LilZ said, “Why haven’t we ever done this before?” “Because I just read about it on a blog today!” “Of course.” We used plain oatmeal and the Strawberries and Cream mixed packet kind. Because you never know what those reindeer might like.

After leaving the food out for the reindeer, we bundled up and walked around the neighborhood looking at Christmas lights. Our street goes all out for Christmas and we wanted to take some time to really examine all of the decorations. Especially the inflatable nativity scenes. Those are my favorite. NikkiZ loved it. After our walk read our goodnight stories and NikkiZ went to bed.

CHRISTMAS MORNING

I woke up at 4am to try to get everything ready for the morning ahead since I had told LilZ he couldn’t get out of bed until 5am. I put out the stockings and hid the scavenger hunt clues (losing one along the way, of course). Then, I took the token picture of it all before waiting for everyone to wake.

Before the bomb drops

MrZ said to wake him up at 5:45am and we’d start opening presents at 6am. We all assumed LilZ would be up and itching to get started, but of course, none of us factored in the fact that he’s a teenager. And they are physically incapable of getting up before the sun. So, I woke him up by storming into his room saying, “WHY AREN’T YOU UP ALREADY?” Of course, his universe protected him by making me trip in the dark and bust my ass before I got to his bed. He said his first thought was, “OH NO” and then his second was, “Don’t laugh.” Smart kid.

I then woke up MrZ and we all went in together to wake up NikkiZ.

This is the looks she gives me every morning when I wake her for school. It’s brilliant.

We then, of course, had to take the token Family In Front Of The Tree photo for the year.

Zoot: SMILE! Everyone else: GRRRRR!

The rest of the day was a blur of presents and food as you can see in the photos below. LilZ got a new camera, a step up from his Kodak. NikkiZ got a Tickle-Me Elmo which she’s not completely in love with yet. She is, however, in love with her shiny red shoes given to her by her Aunt and Uncle. We ate tons of food and watched movies and hung out with a little bit of family and ate dinner with a few friends. It was the Christmas I was looking forward to for 3 years. It would have been perfect if our families could have been in town, but we knew better than to hope for that. But, it was a close as it could get otherwise. Here are some more pictures from the day.

It’s torture making them wait to open presents while Mom takes nineteen million pictures

NikkiZ doing what she does with every sticker she ever gets: Decorates her legs. She’s in her new bathrobe too, which she loves.

LilZ with his new camera, the Canon Powershot IS3. I think he’s already taken about 200 pictures with it.

MrZ with a book that compliments one of his favorite series of all time

She’s kissing Perry (the Penguin) with her new baby doll on her back.

The token photo in the Christmas Dress (Bonus: Shiny Red Shoes!)

She does some light reading (of a guide to an Assasin game, of course) with all five dogs

She started eating early because she was starving to death. I think she enjoyed having the table to herself.

This is a paper hat from the Crackers we popped after dinner. A tradition we’ve had for a few years.

Our Post-Christmas-Gluttony walk.

That’s the last of my Christmas talk. I just wanted to milk it for all its worth since I’ll have to go two years again without it. I needed this to last me 24 months, and I think it will. I hope yours was just as brilliant as ours was!

The Day After Christmas always feels a little like The Day After I Was Up All Night Doing Shots of Tequila In That Country Line-Dancing Bar. (Not that I’ve ever had a night like that, of course.) Well, this year, The Day After Christmas actually feels worse if that’s possible. For some reason, hopefully for nothing tragic or bad, our neighbor left one of their dogs out ALL NIGHT LONG. This is the neighbor on the same side of our house as our bedroom. We noticed the barking around 2 or 3 and I asked MrZ if one of our dogs was left outside. That was the first mistake, I should have never woken him up and pointed out the barking. But - I knew he had let some of the dogs (we’ve got two of his parent’s dogs too) out - and I was worried he had forgotten one. Turns out? It was one of our neighbor’s dogs. She has several, but we only heard one barking, so either the others were quietly sleeping outside, or he was the only one out.

Well - MrZ was unable to get back to sleep. He finally left the bedroom to sleep (I assumed) on the couch. The dog finally stopped barking around 5:30am, so I went to go get MrZ to tell him to come back to bed. Only, he wasn’t on the couch. I thought, “That’s weird” and I might have started panicking and envisioning scenes of kidnappings and murders. I looked in both kid’s rooms and made sure his car was still here. I finally thought, “Holy shit. I’m going to have to call the police to report my husband missing.” I let the dogs out to use the bathroom and was heading out to the garage to see if, on the off-chance, he was sleeping out there. Nope. But - I did find him on the way out. He was sleeping on the COLD floor of the laundry room.

(I did not bother to ask about the logic behind that decision.)

He was bundled up with one of the dogs and sleeping with the dog blankets. I felt so bad for him. I woke him up (after thanking the powers that be that he wasn’t kidnapped) and encouraged him to go back to our bed since the dog had stopped barking.

Only, me letting the dogs out, evidently woke the dog up. So he was back to barking again.

He headed BACK to the laundry room as I tried to figure out a good solution that would get my husband off the very cold linoleum laundry room floor. I finally went in and asked LilZ if he would come sleep in our bed (knowing he can sleep through anything) and give up his bed for MrZ. Which is where we are right now. MrZ in LilZ’s bed and LilZ in our bed. The dog is not barking anymore (of course) and I’m wondering what we’ll do if this Neighbor’s Dog Sleeping Outside becomes a permanent situation.

Let’s pray it doesn’t.

Here are a few pictures of the Post-Christmas Fallout. It was a brilliant day and I’ll give all the gory details once I finish going through the pictures.

I promised family who is far away that we’d show some pictures and/or video AS SOON AS POSSIBLE this morning. So - here they are. We miss you all and wish everyone could be here.

Christmas Morning from zoot on Vimeo.

Stockings from zoot on Vimeo.

• All I want for Christmas is for FOX to stop using my copyrighted photos in their NFL broadcast without asking my permission | Sweetney.com
  Some people!
• slackermama . com » You Need to Read - December 22
  Now THIS is a good collection of readings to get you through the holidays.
• Gretchen Rubin: Twelve Tips to Avoid Seeming Like an Arrogant, Know-It-All Jerk - Living on The Huffington Post
  Would it be offensive if I emailed this to some people? (Thanks to My Tiny Kingdom for the link.)
• a little pregnant: Things that go CREEEEAK GROAAAAN TICK TICK TICK TICK in the night
  I was a kid with VERY unusual but VERY graphic childhood fears.One of which? Was the refrigerator. I feel you, Charlie.
• All you want for Christmas (TV fantasy-wise) is… | PopWatch Blog | EW.com
  Yes. Yes. Yes. This is my fantasy Christmas too. Glad I’m not the only one!
• All-Mighty - For the Love of Boston Terriers - Sit & Stay Red
  Is it too late to ask for this for Christmas?

My mother-in-law mentioned to me very early that she wished she had let her daughter (my sister-in-law) wear her pretty dresses more often. That she wished she had ignored the voice in her head that says “That should only be worn for special occasions”, even though the dress then sits in the closet and goes to waste. I think of this VERY often because I hear that voice all the time. Especially since we don’t go to church so we rarely have places to wear the nice dresses we buy for pictures or were given as hand-me-downs.

So, we end up going to the local Zaxby’s with NikkiZ wearing this dress. Or to Target wearing the same dress as MrZ and I are in sweats. It makes quite a family portrait.

Yesterday, Target had their fancy Christmas dresses on sale for dirt cheap. So, I bought NikkiZ one for $8.98. She wanted to wear it immediately and started trying to disrobe in the middle of Target. I convinced her to wait at least until we got home, where I let her pick out the shoes to wear with the dress. What resulted was her being very excited with her fashion statement and some of the best pictures I’ve taken of her. I’ll let her wear that dress (or any others) anytime she wants. Totally getting my 9 bucks worth out of that one.