A Griswald Christmas!

Christmas 2010 will surely go down in the books for the Ferrie family! At times, Kevin and I felt as though we were in the middle of a "Griswald Christmas" - and thankfully, Kevin and I are the type of people who try to laugh their way through trying times. I have to say, we surely learned some good life lessons that will affect the holidays in the future! :)

As you may have read earlier, our oldest, Mairead, came down with the stomach bug on Wednesday night. I spent all of Thursday sanitizing the upstairs. When we woke up on Friday morning and the remainder of our little family was still healthy, I was amazed. Could We? Are we....Dare we say it? Healthy? We got up, and prepared for our third annual Christmas Eve Open House. I baked cookies and prepared our dinner. In the mid-afternoon, Kevin said he felt a little funny, but it didn't stop him too much. By the time my parents got here and our friends arrived, he started to feel yucky. He wasn't puking, but he was visiting the bathroom a lot.....Hmmmmmmmm....before we knew it, he was throwing up. Thankfully for him, it was just once, and he was blessed with just an annoyance of wonderful diarrhea. 

Here are the girls with my mom cutting out the cookies.

Lilah decorating her cookie for Santa

Mairead looking proud of her decorated cookie! 

The kids had a blast decorating cookies for Santa (each year, I bake cookies and then the kids decorate them to give to Santa) and playing together. Everyone was having a blast! Kevin would try and socialize every now and then, but you could tell he felt yucky. Once our friends left, my parents helped us get the girls ready for bed. We read "Twas the Night Before Christmas" and put the girls to bed. My parents left and we got ready to start wrapping. Yes. You read that right. Start wrapping.

The girls reading with Nana & Papa before bed (just a short time before the "storm")

Lesson #1: It's not a smart idea to wait until Christmas Eve to start wrapping. And I mean, start wrapping. 

So, Kevin and I started wrapping. We sorted out all the girls toys. Kevin was about to put together the girls baby doll bunk bed and we learned yet another lesson: 

Lesson #2: It's not a smart idea to leave all the gifts in their packed boxes before inventory, or making sure everything has all the pieces. 

Yep. The bunk bed came without screws. No screws. The "big gift" for the girls had to stay in the box. What a major disappointment. If that wasn't disappointment enough, at the same time, we heard yelling upstairs...."Lilah's puking!"........NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! I thought. This can't be. Well, it was. We ran upstairs and Lilah was puking all over the place. I felt horribly. We cleaned her up, bathed her and changed beds around, and went back to wrapping.

For about 10 minutes. Until the 2nd round began. 

Lilah was puking again. And again. In between puking episodes, we'd return to wrapping. 

Lesson #3: It's pretty difficult to prepare for Christmas with a puking child. Never wait to wrap every. single. gift. Not smart. 

Once we got Lilah settled, we went back to wrapping. Then, we hear Clara crying on the monitor, which was unusual for her. I had weird feeling. Since we have a video monitor, I was watching her, and then I heard her wretching. I flew upstairs and sure enough, puke all over the place. Oh, and the smell........she was covered. I bathed her while Kevin changed her bed. She wretched some more. Have I mentioned how much I hate watching a small child vomit? It has to be on the of the saddest things ever. They are just so helpless. I just felt horrible for her and Lilah. I nursed her back to sleep and put her to bed. By now, it's about 1030pm, and we're back to wrapping.

Lesson #4: It's even more difficult to wrap your kids Christmas presents with two puking children. Of course, they couldn't plan their puking episodes together, so about every 5-10 minutes we were running upstairs to clean up and care for a puking princess. 

Lesson #5: Not only is it tough to wrap gifts with two children puking, it's tough to wrap gifts while doing mounds of laundry. With the rate of puking children, we were quickly running out of pillows (until we got smart and started using garbage bags underneath the pillow cases to keep the pillows safe), blankets and loveys! 

All we could think about was how we would never forget this Christmas! If that wasn't bad enough, I felt like crap, too. I had a killer head cold and just wanted to go to bed, and Kevin didn't feel too well either after puking and pooping! We were a mess. Finally, around 12:30am, we headed to bed. We were still dealing with puking children, but thankfully, they were slowing down. We tucked the girls in and fell asleep. I hoped the girls would wake up feeling better so we could all enjoy Christmas morning together....

Just before the girls saw what was under their tree! 

...and we did. The little girls woke up feeling better and happy. They were so excited to get downstairs to see Santa. When they saw all the presents under the tree they were just shocked...He really did come...They didn't wait to long to start opening, each gift was better than the last. Lilah was psyched about her new set of scissors! HA! $2 pack of scissors was a hit! Who needs to spend big $$$ on kids!?! Clara enjoyed romping around and just exploring. Mairead was just in heaven - she was so very excited! 

Clara enjoying her new baby doll from Kevin's parents

Mairead proud of all of her gifts! 

Lilah shows her daddy one of her gifts!

Clara opens her first gift! 

Just an idea of how Christmas looked at our house...how special is this?

Since the majority of our family was sick, we decided to stay home and not go to my parents. It was a big bummer because I wanted to see my brother and his family, but, there was no way, I could put my little girls in the car after having such a rough night. They each threw up one more time on Christmas day, but all in all, they were happy and had a really great day. They played. They napped. They were happy.

Mairead & Clara sharing their new toys together.

Mairead playing with her new puzzle

It was actually awesome to just spend the day at home. They played and played and played. They couldn't get enough, and it was nice to not have to take them away from all of their new things. I felt kind of queasy in the morning and thought I was next on the chopping block, but, I was okay. Every time I ate something, I wondered if it would come back to haunt me later! 

Clara taking a sink bath after a diaper blow out! 

That night, everyone was on the mend and went to bed early and slept until almost 9am! We were all very tired from our Griswald Christmas Eve! We all woke up happy and feeling good! yeah! We headed to my parents to celebrate Christmas with  them. We exchanged gifts and had a great lunch together. My mom and I headed to a local shoe store so I could buy some boots for the impending BLIZZARD that was coming for us! I bought some sassy snow boots and can't wait to wear them! Overall, it was another great day!

Mairead enjoying her new gifts at Nana & Papas

Clara and my dad

Lilah proud of all of her new gifts! A second Christmas!

My new boots! Aren't they awesome!?! And they're waterproof! 

Even though our Christmas was filled with lots of germs and sickies, it was actually a really special Christmas. We spent it happily together. I try not to complain of sickness as our family is so very lucky. Our girls aren't sick very often, I just wish the timing had been better...but like always, it could have been worse. Kevin and I tried to laugh when possible and keep things light. We enjoyed each other and had a nice day spending quality time with our three little princesses. How could I ask for more? 

And as Jimmy Buffett would say........"if we couldn't laugh, we'd all go insane..."