Christmas past

About 56 hours ago, we kicked off our Christmas celebration with our attendance at the 4pm Mass, commonly known as the "Children's Mass."

Because Annie and Charlie were both in the Children's Choir, we arrived with plenty of time to get a good seat. (Is that sacreligious -- to designate a seat at church as "a good seat?") Robbie was happy with our location because it put him right in front of his friend Paul, which meant we spent plenty of time during Mass saying "Turn around" and "Leave Paul alone."

I loved watching Charlie sing because it's such a deviation from his ordinary persona.

Annie was a different story. She absolutely did not want to sing in the choir and her face showed it. She was, so "bershon," as we've come to refer to tweens and teens who wear their misery on their faces. We made her be in the choir because we were already making the drive to and from practices and it would be a good use of her talents in service to the church.

To make matters even worse, I told her "consider it your birthday present to the Baby Jesus." Wow, somehow my mouth was channeling my mother's mouth at that moment. The fact that she towered above the rest of the kids in the choir like Buddy the Elf over the rest of the real elves did not help the situation, either.

After church, we went out to dinner, drove around looking at Christmas lights and seeing wither we could see Rudolph leading Santa's sleigh, then came home to watch a little Christmas-appropriate TV. With the kids finally in bed and sound asleep, Mike and I got to work.

No major assembly this year, thank goodness, just some last minute gift coordination. Of course, it almost came to a screeching halt when Robbie woke up and started to head downstairs around midnight. Fifteen minutes later, the kid crisis was averted and the "what happened to the power" crisis reared its head. Crisis is probably a bit strong of a word, but the power did go out for a quick 5 seconds or so, bringing to mind the year the power went out for about 45 minutes and Mike was left to assemble a Fisher Price Little People garage with the help of a head-mounted flash light.

Finally, the tree was ringed with gifts, the stockings were stuffed and we were ready for bed. I suggested to Mike that we wake the kids and get the gift-opening madness over while we were still awake. Then we could go to bed while they stayed up and played all night, eventually falling asleep and letting us sleep even longer. Mike was not to be convinced, so we headed to bed around 1am.

At 3:30am, Charlie came in. "Mom, can we go downstairs?"

"Are you nuts?!" So he climbed into our bed and fell back to sleep, until...

4:30am --

"Mom!," Robbie yelled as loud as you can yell while still whispering. "Santa came. I can see the stockings. Can we go?"

"Are you nuts?! It's 4:30am!" So he climbed into our bed and tossed and turned, until...

5:00am --

"Mom! Can we get up?" Annie this time.

"I must be nuts," I thought as Mike and I got up, defeated and barely coherent. We told the kids to wait on the stairs while we checked to see if Santa had really come -- and while we poured our very big glasses of Diet Coke.

"C'mon! Now? Can we come down?" This is how they looked through my bleary eyes:

About 45 minutes later, at about 6am if you're keeping track, this is all that was left of the carefully wrapped and coordinated Christmas:

Among the highlights were a Ben 10 Omnitrix and shirt for Robbie, iPods for Annie and Charlie, a hoodie from Aeropostale for Annie, an Indiana Jones hat for Mike, and four games for the Wii -- including Wii Fit. As for me, Santa brought several books I was hoping for and a great cardigan sweater jacket.

By 6:30am, the new clothes were on, the iPods were downloading, and paints were open.

Oh, and we discovered that the little power blink the night before rendered our Wii console useless. I could hear Mike cursing in the basement, to which I yelled, "Let's remember the real meaning of this day!" Again, my mother's voice coming out of my mouth...

Fortunately, in an occurrence more akin to Easter than Christmas, the Wii resurrected itself and by noon, lightsaber duels were underway. Which may go down in our family as the second greatest miracle of Christmas.