The moment of Christmas Magic officially hit me this year. It came at about 10:30 PM on Christmas Eve as I flopped myself down on the couch after the last gift was assembled…completely exhausted. I pictured the look on Rylee’s face when she saw the pile of gifts under {and around} the tree. How she might react when she realized Santa had come. How excited she would be when she opened her “big gift” from Santa. I imagined how much Reese would enjoy playing with her gifts.
I thought back to all my years of childhood and how much I loved Christmas growing up. Right then is when it hit me.
My parents created this magic for me every year. And not just for me, but for my 3 siblings as well. I never once thought about it before that moment. But right then, I could picture my parents staying up late on Christmas Eve…filling our stockings, pulling gifts from hiding places, finishing last minute wrapping.
Now here I am, getting to create the Magic of Christmas for my kids.
Parenthood is truly a trip. And you better believe the very next day I made sure to thank my parents for all of their hard work over the years keeping that Christmas Magic alive.
*****
We scaled back our typical Christmas decorations this year because of a certain mischievous almost one and a half year old. I put up the Advent calendar for the second year in a row, though Rylee didn’t seem particularly interested in too many of the activities. I didn’t push it. We didn’t have our annual “Sisters Baking Night”. When it came to opening gifts, Reese wanted nothing to do with any of it. I think it was sensory overload for her.
Rylee, on the other hand is right at the perfect age for the Magic of Christmas. This is the first year she truly got it. She colored Santa a picture and rolled it up in her stocking for him to find. She left Rudolf and the other reindeer celery {we were out of carrots} and was thrilled to see that they were gone when she woke up Christmas morning. When she visited Santa earlier in November, she told Santa she wanted an iPod touch. At first, I thought there was no way in hell Santa would bring her one of those…then somewhere along the way, Santa had a change of heart and ended up reformatting my old iPhone; loading it with {free} games and some of her favorite music. Santa even left a little note typed out to read when she turned it on. We hardly took any photos, and we didn’t take any video but her reaction to all that is something I will remember forever.
Christmas this year was exactly what I was expecting, yet nothing like what I was expecting all at the same time.
Overall? The magic was there, and it was perfect.
*****
Our Nativity had a couple extras this year…apparently there was no room at the Inn for Mickey or Minnie either.
Our tree after Santa came…one of 4 total photos I took the entire day with my “good camera”.
Reese checking out her car…pretty much the only thing she wanted to play with…and ironically enough, the only gift that didn’t involve unwrapping something.
Rylee showing her sister her new iPod!
Us.
