Christmas this year did not turn out at all like we had planned, but we still had a wonderful holiday. Both of our kiddos got very, very sick last week, so we had to change most of our plans. Naomi was over the worst of it by the weekend, but poor Aleta came down with the bug on Saturday and had a fever that spiked at 104.2--it was terrifying!! Naomi's fever had spiked at 104.3, which was also super scary for me, but I was even more worried when Aleta's got that high. She is just barely one year old and still so little! I went in her room and checked on her every few hours that first night--I was just so scared that her fever would spike back up when the medicine wore off, which it did, so I kept checking on her and giving her doses of tylenol and ibuprofen as needed. Thankfully, on Sunday her fever was MUCH better. I don't think it went above 102. What I was especially grateful for was that Aleta didn't have the vomiting or the rash that Naomi had when she was sick. Naomi was throwing up for 2 days and had an awful, itchy rash all over her entire body. She would just sit in her chair, scratching her stomach and arms and legs and crying. It was so sad! I knew if Aleta got the rash, it would be even worse because she is so young and wouldn't understand what was happening. And she would be too young to take Benadryl, which was the only thing we could give Naomi to help. So I am so grateful that Aleta only had the fever!!
Since Aleta didn't get the bug as badly as Naomi, she seemed to get better much faster than we had expected. By Christmas Eve, she was pretty happy again and only had a low fever. We still stayed home on Christmas Eve instead of going to Jacob's parents' as we had originally planned, since the girls were still sick. There are a lot of young babies in Jacob's family, and I didn't want any of them to get what our girls had! And I was worried about our kids being exposed to any other sicknesses or germs when their immune systems have been so run down. So we stayed home. I made peanut butter fudge and chocolate fudge and sugar cookies. We had chocolate chip pancakes and bacon for dinner, and then spent some time as a family decorating the cookies. Then the girls played in their bath, and we read a Christmas story before bed. It was a nice, low-key day, which was just what we needed. After the kids were asleep, I stayed up late cleaning, arranging the gifts under the tree, and making our crock-pot breakfast casserole for Christmas morning. I was so glad that I had wrapped everything ahead of time, because I was up until almost 3 in the morning doing everything else! I wrapped the gifts slowly this year, taking my time to make them look extra good. I was proud of my gift-wrapping this year. I used bows that actually matched the wrapping paper, and I used curling ribbon on some of the presents to make them look pretty. I even searched online for free gift tags and found tags that looked good with each of the different wrapping papers that I used. Then I hung the gift tags from the bows with thread. I especially liked the special tags I found for the gifts from Santa... they were so cute!
Reading our Christmas story
Special gift tags from Santa... how cute are these?
My pretty wrapped gifts!
Thanks to the generosity of others and a few amazing deals that I found, the girls had some great presents to open on Christmas morning! Aleta still doesn't really know what to do with a wrapped gift, so we had to help her, but Naomi loved opening her presents. The play kitchen from my parents was a huge hit, as I knew it would be. The girls will be having lots of fun with that over the next few years!! I think Aleta's favorite gift was a Build-a-Bear teddy bear she received. It was adorable, and she especially loves stuffed animals and teddy bears. She was so cute with the teddy bear, hugging it and patting it on the back. (She recently started doing that whenever we hug her--she pats us on the back or shoulder while she hugs us. It's pretty adorable.)
She did not want Daddy's help to unwrap her present.
Naomi, unwrapping her present SO fast!
Aleta with one of her new toys... it was wrapped in a trash bag, haha.
Aleta with her new activity cube!
Naomi LOVES soccer balls, so we finally got her one of her own.
Since the girls were feeling so much better, we were finally able to go see Jacob's family and spend the rest of Christmas day with them. We had a delicious Christmas dinner, and we even got to make gingerbread houses, which I had really wanted to do this year. We just ran out of time and were too busy with everyone being sick this month, so I was happy that we got to make one on Christmas day! Jacob constructed our little house, but I did something stupid when I started to decorate it and accidentally collapsed the whole thing. We still had fun eating graham crackers and icing though. :)
A bunch of the girls went to see Les Mis at the 9:50 showing last night, so I went, too. Jacob stayed back with the kids and played Halo 4 all night with his brother, so I am pretty sure he had fun as well. Les Mis was amazing! But since it was so late and I had slept so little the night before, I was exhausted, so I want to rent it and watch it again when it comes out on DVD. I think I will enjoy it even more when I'm not falling asleep in my chair. :) We didn't get back to our house until a little after 3 in the morning, so Jacob and I spent most of today taking turns napping!
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