The Day Mom Missed Christmas...or at least the part where she has to cook and do dishes.

The children, even 33 year old ones, were all nestled and snug in their beds when 8am rolled around and Grandpa started banging on the door. What five year old isn't up at the crack of dawn to open presents? Our five year old of course....she was tired.

We invited my grandparents over to watch the kids open presents and I figured that Ryleigh would definitely be up by 7:30 or 8 at the latest, but since we all stayed up so late on Christmas Eve we were all snoozing away well after the sun had peeked above the horizon. It was all good though, we needed to get up and get after it, it would be a long day ahead!

Everyone received more than enough in gifts, especially the girls. We may have to rent a U-Haul to get all this crap, I mean gifts back to Katy. Ryleigh was delighted to find that she had indeed been good enough to get her DSLite from Santa. The same dumb Santa had a DSLite back in Katy but left it in the top of the closet and therefore had to procure a second DSLite and sincerely hopes that the first DSLite can be returned without hassle. Along with the duplicate Sleepy Time Dora that Avery received. Dumb Santa.

After gifts come lunch and my Mom is in charge of lunch for about 30 family members from both sides of the family. Becca and I usually help and I was glad to be able to help more this year because for the first time in 6 years I was neither pregnant nor did I have an under two year old to care for. Freedom is good. But brownies that carry bad pecans are not and apparently that's what got served on Christmas Eve and those of us that ate them paid the price. First Jeramy who went to bed at 9pm on Christmas Eve, then me who was up in the middle of the night and finally mom. Two hours before everyone was due to arrive and about the time all final preparations needed to be made for lunch she was down for the count. In bed with a bad tummy ache. Fortunately for everyone my mom raised a couple of girls that aren't scared of the kitchen. Becca and I furiously started whipping up pies and deviled eggs, we got the tableware all out and set, brewed the tea, made grandma do the gravy and we were all good to go. Poor mom missed the whole dinner, she didn't get to say hi to a single guest. By the time she emerged from her room at 9pm, everyone was gone and the kitchen was clean.

Mom did make it out for our annual tradition of watching the VHS tape of Christmas from 20 years ago. Christmas 1989 was a special year filled with gifts of sweat suits, Scattergories, a pool table and godzilla. It was the year that Curtis got a mini pool table which my sister and I discovered at 3am and decided to play with until my parents heard us and sent us back to bed at around 3:30am. I got a race track and declared that I shall open no other gift so that I could just play with my race track. The best part was when my 8 year old sister opened a gift that was not marked for anyone. Inside was a nice ring which she declared as her own. Steve promptly scolded her for opening to her mother's gift to which she was deeply sorry because the Beckanomics 2nd principle of "finders keepers" had be thwarted. She then went back to the pile of gifts and found one clearly marked as hers, read the lable to all so that all would know and then went about her business of opening gifts.

Without a doubt this has been an eventful year. Some really awesome events and some not so awesome. There were many moments during the last few days that I just had to thank god for my family. Of course my fantastic husband and beautiful girls, but the extended group as well. I'm glad that we all have each other and that the sane can balance out the insane.

I hope that 2010 will be a year of no moving, a year of growing and a year of understanding. But most of all I hope that 2010 will bring us all more love and happiness than we ever thought possible.

Cheers and Happy New Year!