Is This Normal?
The chaos that is the KerbersArchive for Santa
Christmas I
Christmas Day was full of fun, family, and food. And let’s not forget the presents!! I think the pictures tell the story of our day very well.
The kids slept in a little bit. At least my alarm clock started with a 7 instead of a 6…I’ll take it! I of course made them stop on the stairs for a “Christmas morning” picture. They were so patient with me.
This was the booty waiting for us when we got downstairs. Thankfully Santa was good to us again.
The kids tore into their gifts, and just like their personalities, their approach was completely different. Ben started with the small things in his stocking while Emma tore into her big packages.
They were so excited by all their new things that they asked me to take their picture together. How’s that for a role reversal?
After we got cleaned up we went to Uncle Steve & Aunt Mary’s. Dave and I opened our gifts early because Scott & Margie, who had our names, had to leave early. Dave decided that his new clamps worked pretty well. I asked if he could figure out a way to clamp her mouth shut when we need it!!
After everyone arrived we passed out all of the presents. As always, the kids had way more than they needed!
It’s always interesting there, because everyone just dives in and you never really know what anyone gets. It’s kind of like controlled chaos, but somehow it all works.
After a great turkey dinner at Steve & Mary’s, we packed up all of our new things and came home. Emma was thrilled that we had time to try out her new Easy Bake Oven that Santa brought. We decided to make cupcakes for the next day’s Christmas party. She loved every minute of it, and did really well pretty much on her own.
It was a great day. I think the best part is that we have another day of celebrating tomorrow with my family. You can’t beat two full Christmases in a row!
Break?
Even though school’s been out for two days, I hardly feel like I’m on a break. The last two days have been full of last-minute shopping, grocery shopping, wrapping presents, cleaning house and making food for the next four days. Although I love doing most of this last-minute stuff, I feel a bit overwhelmed this year. I usually start making treats and cookies earlier in December, but this year it just didn’t get done. Now I have just two more days to knock out this big-time list before the big guy comes on the 24th. I think I can, I think I can, I think I can…
Overwhelmed
I am completely and totally overwhelmed with the number of gifts my kids got for Christmas. I know that our extended family on both sides truly do love buying things for our kids, but it is getting completely out of control. The thing is, our kids love little things. You give Ben an action figure, he’s thrilled. You get Emma new Barbie or stuffed animal, she’s in heaven. But I guess that Dave’s and my siblings don’t think that’s enough for them, and they often end up getting three or four gifts (or way more) for each.
Let me just say that I know it’s done out of kindness, and I do appreciate that. But all I can think about are the kids who get nothing for Christmas, or the kids who get a winter coat from a charity at Christmas because they don’t have one before that. It makes me sick to have all this new stuff when my kids want for nothing. We try to control it a little bit by telling them that you can only ask for two things from Santa. That keeps things sort of reasonable here on Christmas morning. But then we want to get them things from us, too, and before you know it, we’re buying more than we originally wanted, too.
I’m not sure what to do about this situation. I know I shouldn’t complain that our kids have family who love them and want to give to them, but tonight I just feel guilty and bad about all of this stuff. Over half of it could have gone to others who have nothing and my kids still would have had a great Christmas.
Hopefully next year we can somehow address this before the Christmas season. I certainly don’t want to offend anyone, but I want my kids to understand that Christmas is not just a time for being showered with presents, either. I have about 11 months to figure out how to make our families understand that with us, less is definitely more. Wish me luck!
Christmas!
What a wonderful Christmas day we had.
We started about 7am when Ben came into our room with a huge smile on his face. Unfortunately Emma wasn’t up yet, so we tried to stall him a little bit. But the excitement was just a little too much, so we agreed to wake her up. That was not the smartest thing we’ve done, as she was a bit grumpy. 
It’s pretty sad to see a three-year old grumpy on Christmas morning. But they both rushed downstairs to see if Santa had visited us, and we were all thrilled to find out that he had! We had a great time opening our gifts from Santa. Ben was thrilled that he got just what he wanted; a bucket of How to Train Your Dragon figurines and some dinosaurs. 
Emma got her wishes, too; a mermaid tail and a Lalaloopsy doll. Santa also gave them some fun stocking stuffers and they each got a book…of course.
The kids were able to open their gifts and play with everything for a while before we headed out to Aunt Mary and Uncle Steve’s house for Kerber Christmas. It wasn’t long before the entire family was there and it was time to open presents! As always, this was a long ordeal, but everyone was given some wonderful things and we felt appreciative and blessed. A couple highlights for the kids 
were the Chipettes (or the “Single Wadies” as she puts it) for Emma and a stuffed Pteranodon and dragon for Ben. Our kids do love their stuffed animals.
After the opening, it was almost 12:30. Emma was still a bit crabby, and that was not being helped by the fact that she was hungry and tired. So I packed up her stuff and brought her home for some lunch and a good nap. There was just no good place at Steve and Mary’s house for her to get the sleep she needed, so this was the best alternative.
When we got back out there, Ben was excited to tell me all of the things he had been doing. He and Dave had played with all of his new things, and Aunt Theresa had read him almost all of his new books. They had a great afternoon.
We had a delicious turkey dinner and enjoyed our time together. When it was time to come home, the kids weren’t really even upset by that because we had a such a nice day. The best thing is that we get to do it all over again tomorrow at Atherton Christmas in Sycamore!
Ready for Santa
The excitement in the house is almost palpable. It’s Christmas Eve and Santa will be here in no time. We had a great day and evening together as a family and I think everyone is eagerly anticipating the next couple of days. But tonight before the kids headed to bed, there were things that needed to get done.
First, we wrote a note so Santa would know that the things on the coffee 
table were for him. Then we got the special cookies we had decorated and selected for him and put them on our special Santa plate. We also got a couple of carrots to leave for him to take up to the reindeer. Finally, we poured a glass of milk and our setting was complete.
We can’t wait to see what Santa brings us. Thankfully the kids were so exhausted from playing outside for two hours this afternoon that neither one of them complained too much when we headed up to bed. I’m sure they were asleep in no time, and I’m just hoping that they sleep until at least daybreak before bounding into our room to get us up to see what is waiting for tomorrow morning.
Decorating cookies
I couldn’t wait any longer…it was time to decorate our cut-out cookies today. It’s not really that I didn’t want to do it…really. But I knew that they kids would be so excited that it would be tough to limit them to decorating only a few of the cookies we made. And believe me, when you see the cookies my kids create, you understand immediately why they can only decorate some of them.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. I got them all set up at the counter and chose two of each kind of cookie we made…two stars, holly leaves, bells, big trees, little trees, big candy canes, little candy canes, big stockings and little stockings. That meant they each got to decorate nine cookies, which I thought would satisfy them pretty well. I was in charge of frosting, and they were decorating with M&Ms and green and red sprinkles. 
It was actually really sweet, because they were both very focused on their work. Each M&M was individually placed with care, and the sprinkles were placed pretty carefully, too. The problem is just that they just don’t do so well in the editing department. The cookies quickly became completely and totally covered with decoration…and not always in an aesthetic way.
All in all, we had a really fun time, and the whole process went much better than I imagined. The nine cookie limit was perfect, as the attention spans lasted about that long, too. When they were done, I decorated the rest of them in my traditional red and green sugar methods. The ones decorated by the kids will stay here for them to enjoy and the ones I did will go to Sycamore with us for Christmas at my parents. Another successful Christmas tradition is in the books!
A great day
Today was a great day.
First, we woke up to a true winter wonderland. We were out of the house pretty early to get to Daddy’s work to see Santa. Although neither of the kids wanted to sit on his lap or talk to him, we had written notes to Santa and they both wanted to give him their notes and they were considering a picture with him.
I’m happy to report that for the first time Ben let himself get close enough to Santa to get a picture with him…but only on the condition that I be in the picture, too. 
I’m not sure why Emma wouldn’t talk to Santa this year when she did last year, but he did get a kick out of her note. “You don’t do naughty things, do you?” he asked her. She nodded yes. “Well,” he said, “I’m sure you try hard not to do that.” She got a huge smile on her face. I think she was genuinely relieved. Her confession of doing naughty things had lightened her conscience.
After running around and posing at every photo spot imaginable, we headed for home. All in all it was a successful trip, but now we were all eager to get outside to play in the snow. As soon as our feet hit the floor we were off to change clothes and get into the snow gear. Our neighbors were already outside, which made the need to get out there and play even more immediate. Finally, we had the snow pants, boots, gloves, hats and coats donned and they were off. Dave and I got our stuff on, and headed out. The weather was perfect for playing outside…it was 31° and there was not a speck of wind. No one was complaining that they were cold…even me! We started over at Mathiases house, but I soon reminded the kids that they could sled down our driveway, so we all headed over to our house. At first we couldn’t get a good run going because there was about 5-6″ of snow and it was pretty heavy. 
But after a few runs, it was packed down pretty good and everyone went down the driveway over and over again. It’s so perfect for this age, because they can all easily carry their own saucer back up to the garage. We got out our two person sled and the kids went down in every combination they could…Emma and Ben, Emma and Maxon, Ben and Maxon, Emma and Elijah, Ben and Elijah, Maxon and Elijah. Over and over and over and over. And each time the smiles were bigger than the next.
Dave decided it was finally a great chance to get out the block forms he had gotten three years ago, and he and David started building a snow block wall. The kids helped a little bit, but they were generally much more interested in knocking the thing down after it had gotten to be three or four blocks high. That let to a gigantic snowball fight. 
Seriously, I cannot remember having more fun with the kids. We all loved it. After about an hour or so I was getting cold and decided it would be best to go in and get started making some lunch. The kids lasted another half hour before they were ready to come in. I’m most happy to report that even though their snow pants and coats were absolutely soaking wet, neither of them had wet sleeves, pants or socks. Yay for spending a little extra money for good boots and gloves!!
Both kids crashed in the afternoon, which was good because our fun day was not over. Around 4:30 we headed over to the Mathiases for dinner and some serious playing. We’ve started getting together with them more now that we can’t see them outside as much. It’s crazy how much fun the kids together, and we parents have been really enjoying it, too. By the time we left it was after 9:30 and our kids were beat.
So like I said, this was a great day. I hope that I can long remember the fun we all had together.
The message from Santa
I belong to a librarian listserv for Illinois school librarians. What that means is any school librarian can ask the listserv a question and get a bevy of information from librarians from all over. It’s great. Yesterday, someone asked about online letters to Santa, and one of the replies had a link to a website where you could get messages from Santa sent to your email. I decided to check it out, and it was so cute that I had to sign up to get a message sent to Ben and Emma.
This evening we watched the videos from Santa and they were a total hit! You can see Emma’s message here and Ben’s here. Both kids were staring at the screen like Santa himself was going to pop out of it. 
And Emma was nodding along while he was talking like she understood and agreed with everything he said. The cutest thing was when Santa was wrapping up his message. Emma started waving at my laptop and said, “Bye Santa…I love you!” I’m so glad I took the time to do this for the kids. It truly brought some of the magic of Christmas to them both.
It’s Christmas!
Wow, what a Christmas day. Let me tell you a little about last night first, though. Grandma Judy made Grandma Jane’s hamballs, which were awesome. It was a little like the Christmas Eves of my childhood. After dinner we took some family pictures outside and then headed to church. I was a little concerned with how my kids would behave during the service, but they were both pretty good. Ben worked almost the entire time coloring a picture of the nativity scene. Thank goodness the church gave them a little bag with some crayons in it!
After church it was time for presents. We went back to the condo, passed them all out, and started opening. Ben was thrilled with everything he got, but I’d have to say the biggest hit was a set of dinosaurs from Curtis. They walk and make noises, and are pretty awesome. Emma was very excited to get a real camera from Jamie. She was snapping pictures left and right. There were many more toys and gifts that everyone loved, but I’m not going to list them all off. Overall, it was a super fun night and we really had fun opening all of our gifts together.
Finally, about 10:00, my kids put out their stockings, set cookies out for Santa, and went to bed. It was just about the latest they have ever stayed up, I think! We got all of the Santa stuff ready for Grandma to put out after all of the kids were in bed, and we headed home to get some sleep ourselves.
This morning, we set our alarm early to ensure that we would get to Grandma’s before the kids got up. Thankfully we did make it, but not by much! When they came out they were thrilled to see that Santa had eaten the cookies we left and had filled all the stockings left by Grandma’s tree. 
As all of the kids started ripping into their presents, there were various exclamations coming from each. My favorite, though, was heard when Ben opened his squishy lizards. “Thank you Sant-uh!” he shouted. It was very cute. Emma loved her tiger that cooed and cried. She instantly started feeding it the bottle and snuggling with it. So cute.
After the kids opened their gifts from Santa, we all just vegged out and played with new stuff. A couple of us took naps. It was nice. The plan was to have a big cookout on the beach with all of the extended family, but the weather was just not cooperating. It had rained most of the morning, and although the rain had stopped, it was still cool and wet outside. Many family members headed to the beach, and they even took a Christmas tree out there
and got some pictures. But it was just not very pleasant out there at all. So by the time Emma got up from her nap and we headed out, everyone else was packing up to come back to Grandma Judy’s clubhouse. Thankfully we had that reserved for later anyway, so the cookout just got moved inland. Truthfully, it was probably for the best. As awesome as the beach is, it is also one big mess, so the thought of cooking out in the midst of a ton of sand wasn’t too pleasant.
Once everyone got to the clubhouse we really had a terrific Christmas party. It was way warmer at the clubhouse, so several people hopped in the pool for a swim. We were even able to get 
all of the grandkids (minus Derek, who’s girlfriend was sick and had to go to the hospital) together for a group picture. How we pulled that off is beyond me! The three grandmas had provided hot dogs, hamburgers, brats, potato 
salad, and baked beans. Everyone else brought “snackies” and desserts, and let me tell you it was a spread. After dinner Grandma Judy played a game with the kids and they each got their favorite candy as a prize. That certainly kept them occupied! The adults had a huge Euchre tournament. I’m happy to report that Debbi and I won second place. Yeah, we still got it!
By 10:00 we thought our kids would be ready to drop, but they were still running around like crazy and playing Ring Around the Rosy. Emma was so sad that the party was over, and so was I. All the planning and discussion about this day were definitely worth it…it truly was the perfect party for our family. I hope we can do it again sometime, although I know it won’t be anytime soon.
Just like old times
Today was just kind of a bumming around day. Connie, Debbi, Paula and I ran to Tervis to pick up some glasses. We all needed some new ones, and Deb had a couple of old ones to trade out. I was excited to see some smaller ones that were just the right size for the kids. I picked up two for each of them and I think they’ll really like the designs I chose. After Tervis, Deb, Paula and I ran to Target so both of them could stock their houses with some essentials and we could all finish up our stocking stuffer shopping. It was a long trip, but it’s always a good time hanging with the Johnson sisters.
After dinner, Dave volunteered to stay home and put the kids to bed and the rest of us all went to Chuck and Rita’s house to see everyone. All of their family had finally arrived, and it was the first chance we’d had to all get together. It was awesome chaos there. There were Euchre games going on, there were kids in and out of the hot tub, there were video games on the TV, and there was a table full of family members catching up. Even though there was probably almost three times the number of people there, it totally reminded me of my childhood…with all the family hanging out together on any random evening just having a great time with each other’s company.
