Merry Christmas

Hope you and your family had a very Merry Christmas!

Our Christmas was wonderful although we didn't spend it like we expected! We made a point to lay low and make sure that Lily had an opportunity to recover fully from her pneumonia before Christmas. What we didn't plan for was Mommy getting a stomach virus (or food poisoning) the afternoon of Christmas Eve!

Christmas Eve morning Lily and I met Dad at the diner for breakfast. Lily literally hadn't been out of the house for days/weeks and Mommy was getting a little house bound, too!

Lily and I came home from breakfast and started cooking for Christmas morning. We were having a great time and then I started to feel not quite right. By about 1:00 I was sick...really, really sick. It would probably be more accurate to say I was violently ill! Honestly, I don't ever remember being that sick.

Thank God Tony got off early on Christmas Eve. As I counted the minutes until Tony came home I wondered how on earth single parents do it?!? I was in no shape to take care of Lily and don't know what I would have done if it weren't for Tony!

As the afternoon progressed I was trying to make deals with myself that I wasn't really as sick as I was. You see, I just couldn't imagine missing Christmas Eve at Mary Beth's. But, miss it...we did. It is without a doubt one of my favorite holiday traditions! The good news about traditions is that there's always next year!!

Several years ago we began having Suzy and Sheila over Christmas morning for brunch and to exchange gifts. It's a fun part of our Christmas tradition and was even more fun last year with Lily! Unfortunately, I wasn't able to do that either. I felt awful cancelling at the last minute but there was just no way I could do it. I was only sick for about 12 hours...but on Christmas day I felt (and looked) like a dish rag!

Christmas night we normally head up to Patti's for dessert. I love this part of Christmas, too. It's fun to get together with everyone and share about our day. Again, there's always next year!

For this year Christmas was a low key, lazy, lovely day. We spent the whole day in our pajamas! Lily had a blast playing with her gifts and Tony and I had so much fun watching her! It still seems impossible that this is our second Christmas with our sweet girl.

Sorry about all the whining. Please know that I realize having a stomach bug is a minor inconvenience and that many people suffer real hardships every day and especially during the holidays.

I mostly wanted to blog about this so years from now when we look back at our pictures from this Christmas we'll remember why Mommy was the same color as the Christmas Tree! Speaking of pictures...here are some of the outtakes from the 'photo session' that provided the beautiful picture above:




I think this picture pretty much sums up how Lily felt about the 'photo shoot'!

Over the next few days I'll post some more about our Christmas and our little rock star in the making! I've got some great video I can't wait to post!