Christmas

Ava's 3rd Christmas turned out better than I hoped.
I kind of lost all ambition the last couple of days before the big day.
But the bike that Santa got Ava was a big hit! She loves all the presents that she was given. She plays with all of them.
I feel bad we didn't get more toys for Ava. We focused more on being a big girl. Big girl bedding, big girl clothes, big girl bike. But she got really cool toys from others so I think it made up for it! :)

Christmas turned out to be ok after all. After my meltdown on Saturday things went a little better. I guess this holiday turned out to be harder than I expected. I really missed my mom. We didn't really do the same things here in Nevada that we did in San Diego (meaning, we didn't put the tree together, we didn't put out decorations together, we didn't go through all the ornaments) but I guess I wanted our Christmas to be special for our family like it was with mine when I was a little kid. I guess when we get older we just have to make new traditions. Things aren't always the same and we just have to move on.

Thats exactly what we did. I cooked Christmas dinner. Mostly from bags and boxes. :) Store bought mashed potatoes (which were awesome), frozen veggies, dinner rolls, ribs, little wienies. It turned out pretty good.
We just had a few family members over. We watched the Grinch, played video games and then everyone went home. It was a pretty easy going day.

Ava seemed to enjoy her day. She wasn't feeling so well. But she had a really fun day. Christmas night....we didn't go to bed. We were up until 2am Monday morning.
I think her daycare sicknesses are starting to settle in. They always say the first year of school is the hardest. We are finally figuring that out. She is still a little under the weather but you can't tell unless she sniffs her nose or coughs. She's a pretty good sport when she's sick. She must truly be a Wozniak. She just waits it out and rolls with the punches. She doesn't let anything get her down.

We made it through Christmas.
My first Christmas with out mom. First Christmas without Grandmother and first Christmas without our cat Fizz.

One of my favorite things that my parents and I did when I was growing up, we would usually set up for Christmas Thanksgiving weekend. We would bring in the tree and put it together. we would string the lights on the tree while listening to Christmas music on one of the local radio stations, we would put hooks on the ornaments, then get out Santa Brother (since I didn't have any siblings I would carry around this Santa doll when I was really young), we would set out the Christmas town, my dad would hang lights. At night we would sit and light the fire in fire place, drink hot chocolate and either that same weekend or one of the weekends closer to Christmas we would make petty coat tails. Those were my mom's signature cookies. She would make tons of other cookies as well. I would take them to school, she would take them to work and my dad would share them at his school as well. My mom went all out at Christmas. We always had tons of presents under the tree.

I think maybe I feel bad because I don't know what to get people for gifts. Maybe I feel bad because we didn't get to hang lights this year, or bring out all of the Christmas decorations like I wanted (part of me is nervous because Ava is so young and I'm just scared she might break something). I am not a cook so I don't really bake cookies or make baked good for people like my mom did.

But we got through the holidays. We are so much closer to 2012. I have a wonderful feeling that 2012 will be an amazing year. Not sure why, or what but I'm positive 2012 will be a great year!