Its the most wonderful time of the year

There was supposed to be a big storm the first weekend of christmas vacation.

There wasn't really. We travelled to London that day, with fairly decent weather. We went to a family gathering of sorts. My mother in laws aunt's family. Her aunt had many children. Her aunt is very Dutch. She still has her accent. She is entertaining. I sat next to her at my seester Jenn's wedding shower and she kept mumbling hilarious things to me about other people's presents. She was trying to be discreet but she was a little loud. We showed her my children and I told her she was brave for having 8 cuz I can abrely handle having 2 and she  looked stunned and said "oh! I don't feel brave"
Bless her.
The family rents a school and theres a gym for the kids to play in. Sophia had a fantastic time running after balls. Elisa had a fantastic time crawling after balls. Her pink pants were no longer pink.
They also had a photo booth type area where one of the cousins took pictures. You could put hats and fun stuff on but since we were in a hurry we just wanted to try to get a nice family picture to send with christmas cards ( ha! christmas cards. didnt get sent).
We succeeded. Or rather he succeeded in photographing us all - neither josh nor i looking drugged, both girls looking; maybe not smiling but looking. I am waiting for that photo to be sent to me so I can send it out to people with "christmas cards"

We went to A&W and had supper. The girls did surprisingly well. That was the first time we ate at a restaurant with both girls without Elisa being a comatose newborn. We then drove around to look at the more fun houses with christmas lights. My father in law is a bus driver and hes all over the city so he knew of a few places. That was cool. Its been a long time since we went out looking at christmas lights.

Since I am writing about two weeks ago my memory is foggy. So I will go with what I remember.
December 22 was to be the arrival of seester and Alex - alex is seester's husband. Seester is Josh's sister. We call each other Seester.
Anyway, we had flight details, but all was chaos at Pearson. We were watching the flight tracker on united's site. At one point it said their flight had left Boston ( or washington I cant remember which) My father in law and Josh were very eager to get on their way and they left.
Then we discovered taht their flight number had changed, not left, and was delayed.
Then it was delayed again.
and again.
Josh and father in law decided to wait it out at our house. Except we had no power and according to the neighbours, hadn't since that morning at 2am.
Then the flight was cancelled so they drove back to London and got home around 930.
Sophia had not taken well to daddy not being there for bedtime -and in a place that wasn't home. It was actually really sad.

The next day they took off again, this time to Detroit, as that was the only place they could get a flight to before Christmas day. Josh didn't have his passport. Just lisence and birth certificate. So that presented a challenge as Dave didn't want to go alone ( and didnt know how to use our phone with the app we were using to communicate with Jenn and Alex) We were all a little antsy about what was going to happen, but he got through just fine ( Thank you Lord AGAIN!). Thankfully this flight actually arrived and  landed on time and we actually got to have christmas together. Too short of a time, but they arrived safe and we had a delicious dinner, fun games ( a scavenger hunt for Sue, my mother in law and I, so we could discover where we were going for our christmas present from Jenn - which will be spoken of later) and present time.

My father in law got a screwdriver that was about 4 feet long. His expression was hysterical.

The next day we had to leave....headed for home to meet up with mom at our houose. Our friends who are usually on the same power grid as us got power back monday night. Great! we thouoght. Just in time! We thought.

We made it to Mississauga and mom texts me that we have no power and the house is freezing.
Awesome.
As Id had two nights in a row of terrible sleep I began to cry. All I wanted was my bed. Lol. I cried and apologized to Josh and cried more. Then I began to have a process. We are going to Peterborough....this could be nice.....then i said to Josh, maybe Emily will come visit. Then I cried, realizing how much I missed her because I hadnt seen her in months. Then I was happy because she was excited. Then I cried because I felt sorry for the people who had no where to go....and on and on for about 20 kms. It was very hormonal. In hindsight kind of funny.

We got home, dropped off presents, picked up the rest that were at home and prepared to leave.
It was seriously so cold.

The girls were in their car seats for 2 1/2 hours by then. it would be another 1 - 1 1/2 hours to Peterborough. You better believe we were praying for a bearable trip. We started out by singing and then...miraculously...the children passed out.

By the time we reached Peterborough I was feeling much more optomistic. A little melancoly because of nostalgia and people no longer there that I wish were, but mostly optimistic.

My sweet mother let us sleep in her room and she slept in a cot in the living room. That made me cry too because I was so desperate for sleep and knew I wouldn't get it on the couch. She insisted and that was probably, honestly the best christmas present she's ever given me.

We have this tradition on christmas eve where we get Chinese food. Hello yummy!!! I also got to see my Emily.

Christmas day I made a huge breakfast. WE opened our gifts. S actually opened presents this year. She said "rip!" alot and thoroughly enjoyed it. More than she enjoyed her actual gifts. E ate the paper. Naturally I took pictures before taking it away cuz im an awesome mom like that.

Hubbie blew me away this year. He got me a variety of wonderful things. But....he got me the hunger games trilogy. I was....so pleased. As I began to read it I became even more pleased. I became like I was in teh old days, when I lived in books. Walking around, head in the clouds....living in the book and managing to still perform my duties and etc. Oh boy it was crazy. Every chance I got I read.
I finished all three in less than a week. And took care of the children. And didnt ( well maybe a little) ignore my husband. I will just say that the final movie better be a little more positive than the book. That book nearly killed me emotionally. it took a few days to get over the abuse my heart took.

Heres another "God provision"
So....our power was out right? It continued to be out. All the while I secretly worried about the pipes bursting but didnt say anything because I dont really know about these things and figured since no one else mentioned it, it probably wasn't valid. Then mom brough it up. Then JOsh worried. and worried. He was going to go back home to check it out, but we found ourneighbours phone number to call and see if power had been restored. It hadn't.....but...they had a key from when the old owner lived here.
We have been wanting to change our locks for a while. Not to mention change the STUPID doorknob that is ridiculously hard to turn to open the door ( which in the summer wasnt such a pain, but, with biting cold winter with a vengance, its been HORRIBLE) We hadn't changed the locks thouogh and that turned out to be a good thing, because they were able to come in, bleed the lines and turn off the water. Josh got to stay with us :) They kept checking back for us for the power ( theirs came on a lot sooner than ours) and boxing day afternoon it was back.

IN the meantime mom and I got to go shopping together for her christmas present, we got to visit some friends and just spend time chilling and hanging out with mom.

This was probably the best christmas I've had in a long time. I missed my dad waking me up saying " wake up! Santa was here"
I hope you all had a wonderful christmas with your loved ones :D

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