Christmas 2008

Here's a re-cap of Christmas 2008 at the Powell-yarnall house. Santa came a day early to our place in Athens. Isaac has been asking for a fire truck and pumpkin which Santa delivered. Santa also thought Isaac would enjoy an easel so one of those arrived, too. This was the first time in 7 years that Donavan and I have been home for the Christmas Eve service and it was really, really nice to attend the St. Joe's children's service. Isaac slept through half of the service which was nice for mom and dad. I was actually able to focus on the service.

We hit the road on Christmas eve for our annual holiday trip to visit family in Indiana. We arrived on Christmas day, after spending Christmas Eve night in a hotel, and had dinner with Mimi and Poppi Yarnall. We spent the next 4 days celebrating Christmas with the Yarnall and Powell families. It was especially nice to have my brother home from Hong Kong for a visit. We ate very well and can definitely tell it's time to get back into the work out routine by the way my pants are fitting today. Our car was packed to the brim (as it always is) with an abundance of gifts. We've been pulling out the gifts one by one since coming home and Isaac loves all of his new goodies. Isaac especially enjoyed spending time with his family and LOVED his 10 month old twin cousins (Ella and Emerson). He was so gentle, kind and shared the toys very well.

Today is boys last day of vacation (Donavan returns to work on Monday, Isaac's preschool resumes on Tuesday). We thought it was time to put away the Christmas decorations. We've been talking with Isaac about this for about 4 days--the fact that the tree has to come down so we can make room for his train table again. He keeps telling us it's okay for the tree to "go away" until next year. I started to take down our mini 3 foot tree and Isaac had a fit. Then, when the larger living room tree starting to come down, he had an absolute breakdown. Tears, tears and more tears. Sometimes I wonder if we involve and communicate with Isaac too much. I know that if we tear down the tree during his nap, he'll still be devastated. At this point there's going to be tears one way or another.