The Day After

It's the day after Christmas. It's time to recover from all the excess, clean up the mess, and come out of the post holiday meal stupor. But let's rewind to Christmas Eve, the day all the festivities really start. As usual we invited all our local family to our home for dinner Christmas Eve. For Lars, that means getting up early and starting his cooking regimen. The sweet guy that he is, he always works really hard and over does it for these family events. That meant also keeping Lauren occupied so she wouldn't want to go in the kitchen to "help".

So after watching a few Christmas shows with Lauren, I took her out for lunch and to one of the local smaller malls that she likes going to because they have coin-operated rides (especially a small merry-go-round that seats three). While we were at the mall, we noticed that Santa was present and holding court. In past years, we've not been able to convince Lauren to sit on Santa's lap or take any pictures with him, as she's always thought he was scary looking (and if you think about it, to a toddler, he probably is pretty scary looking). This year though, she's finally able to grasp the concept that Santa comes on Christmas eve and brings little kids presents (probably from TV, daycare and listening to her cousin Michaela talk about it).

So she was all set this year to tell Santa what she wanted to Christmas, and readily agreed to go see Santa when I suggested it to her while we were at the mall. The line was relatively short, and we were on Santa's lap in no time. Lauren was so excited she sat on Santa's lap and immediately blurted out she wanted candy canes and a car seat. I had to explain to Santa that she meant a car seat for her baby doll. And then I asked Lauren if there was something else she wanted and as excited as she was, she said, "I can't remember, what is it?", so I reminded her that just minutes ago, she had told me that she wanted a guitar as well. And she promptly told Santa, "Oh, yeah, and I want a geeeee-tar". We got a beautiful picture of Lauren sitting on Santa's lap, and then she and I went searching the mall for an appropriate gift for Grandma.

After we got home, guests started arriving, including my two sisters and their families, my Aunt Lih, Uncle, Tao, Aunt Cathy, Jeff, Eric (and his girlfriend Tiana), and then my cousin Ling and his family (a nice surprise as Ling usually has to work on holidays). We had lots of little ones in the house as usual, and all of them were excited about the prospect of presents. Daniel was better than in recent years, willing to wait until after dinner to open his presents.

We had a great dinner supplemented with dishes from all our guests. After dessert all the kids tore in their presents. It was like a gift wrap explosion and storm. We stuck for the most part to our rule about no presents for adults (much better than we've done in recent years). Thanks everyone for nice gifts you gave Lauren. She was excited and played with her cousins until well past her bedtime.

After she was asleep, we put the presents from Santa (the guitar, doll/w car seat, and candy canes) under the tree, so that she'd have a Christmas morning surprise. On Christmas morning she was so excited she burst out screaming in laughter when she opened her presents. That's something that stays with a parent for a long time and makes all the preparations worthwhile.