Holiday Season 2010

This year was the first year that I was able to take off a long period of time during the holidays. Since Baba went to San Diego, I got to spend a two weeks at home with my little babies! It was a good time, but tiring since I brought home a stomach virus that infected the entire family (more on that later).

This year Christmas was a lot of fun since Emmie was really into the Christmas spirit (meaning she loved all things dealing with gifts)! Everything was on her list and she even put things on Drew's list for him. The very first present under the tree was a gift for her from Drew. She picked up that gift everyday and shook it and reminded us it was hers. Even though she was into what she wanted, she also got into the giving spirit. I took one day off in early December to commit to an entire day of shopping, which was a little derailed because Emmie wanted to come with me. Before I said she could come, I told her we would be shopping for everyone else and not herself. I didn't know how well that would go over, but she did great. She looked at things for herself but also picked gifts for the babies and Drew. It was an awesome mommy and me shopping day!

But it wasn't all just about the gifts, we had a great time decorating the house and the tree. We painted about a million ornaments and made that one perfect strand of popcorn garland (which included a giant popcorn mess on the floor)! I might be rethinking the whole popcorn garland thing next year!

Our first Christmas gift exchange was in Austin with the Anderson's! Mica, the brave mama that she is, drove her two little rascals, all by her lonesome, to meet us in Austin to exchange gifts! Emmie and Drew loved staying at the hotel. Every time Emmie sees a Holiday Inn logo she asks "Is that Austin? Can we go see Ella?" So glad that we got to see Mica and the kids got to play. And of course we had yummy food with visits to Pluckers and Kerbey Lane. Wrapping up the adventure at the Austin Children's Museum. After the little Austin trip, we had a gift exchange with the local babies and boy are those babies adding up! (Side note: If you recall, during our trip to NY Drew picked up a Sing-a-ma-jig at Toys R Us! A few days later, I decided that was what I wanted to buy all the babies for Christmas this year. So I went out and bought them up in bulk! I just love those little things even if they do look a little freaky!) Since no one in the group wanted to take the dive and have a get together at their house for the little ones to exchange presents, I decided to suck it up and do it! We had everyone over and the kids all got to tear open their presents. We even attempted to take a group picture of the babies...not so successful...maybe next year! During the first week of vacation, Dennis ended up being home the majority of the week, so we had a lot of family fun! We went for an ice skating adventure at Discovery Green! This was the second year Emmie and Dennis went but mine and Drew's first! We met with Tita Sisi, Ash, Tita Janette and Uncle Khiem. I had purchased discount skating passes for 4 of us, so only Emmie, Ash, Khiem and I actually skated. Emmie loved the baby rink and bravely said she wanted to go to the big rink. The instant she stepped in the big rink she fell to her knees, and I picked her up as quickly as I could (fearing that I might fall on her). But after that fall, she wanted nothing else to do with the big rink, I made it a quarter of the way around and Tita Sisi was sitting at a table there so I handed her over! She rested for some time before she finally decided to go back to the baby rink...where she wasn't shy to show off her skills! Drew was happy to watch us all skate after he ran around the park!

A couple of nights before Christmas Eve, I was invited to an old friend's son's birthday party! I was particularly excited about going since I hadn't seen this friend in years and hadn't had a chance to meet her baby! I got a little less excited when I found out it was up north and Dennis wouldn't be able to attend because he had football. My consolation to Dennis not being there was that Alisa would be there with Maddy and Paige! Well turns out I should have never went to that party since that is where I contracted the stomach virus from hell. The virus did not hit until 2 days later (the first day that Dennis went back to work), and I thought it was food poisoning at first. I spent Christmas Eve cursing Fuddruckers! I was able to get through the morning with the kids on my own but luckily my in-laws came to the rescue and came to watch the kids while I "napped" (waking every 20 minutes to run to the bathroom is not what I consider full on napping). I needed what little rest I got so was thankful for every second I got. After the in-laws left, the Hoang's came over to shift 2. I was just pretty much completely useless so it was nice to have them there to entertain the kids. If I knew it was a virus I would have never asked them over, luckily the Hoang's all have strong immune systems and no one caught the virus. Finally Dennis was home and I just passed out on the couch! Dennis took the kids out for a little bit so I could have some peace and quiet...it was anything but peaceful for him...since that's when the virus hit Drew. Drew threw up about 5 or 6 times while out with Dennis and it didn't help that it was pouring rain and he was waiting out the rain at Target! I slept peacefully on the couch while they were out!

Since I spent most of the day sleeping, I was wide awake that night. I was feeling slightly better so, I was able to prep up all of Santa's gift. I also allowed the kids to open one gift each before going to bed, and they got coordinating PJs from Old Navy! And I was happy that they both were willing to wear them to bed that night (last year my coordinated PJ plan didn't work too well). Only disappointment was we didn't get to bake cookies for Santa as planned. But the gifts still made the impact I was looking for!

Christmas morning, Drew woke up before Emmie, so we just hung out and waited until Emmie got up! And then it was downstairs for some Christmas fun! Emmie got the dollhouse that she emailed Santa about (since she didn't want to sit on his lap at Bass Pro). When she lifted the wrapping paper and peered into the house, the first thing she said was "There's no Barbie in there!" (I had planned on getting a new Barbie for her on Christmas Eve, but that didn't work out).

She got over it the second, I mentioned that she needed to help Drew open his present from Santa! She rushed over and called for Drew but he didn't really want to come over since he was busy checking out the dollhouse. But after she tore off the paper, Drew immediately darted over to the trampoline and started jumping. He didn't care to open anything else, so Emmie was able to open the rest of their gifts herself. Since I still didn't know we had a virus, Drew tends to throw up when he gets sick, we packed up our stuff to head out for more Christmas festivities. First we went to my brother's house for Christmas with the Vinh's. The kids were showered with gifts and the adults had a fun white elephant gift exchange (old and new). We had a good time just hanging out with family and catching up! Then we headed over to the the Quinio's for more Christmas presents! The kids were definitely spoiled here! The gifts would not stop coming! We couldn't fit all the presents to bring home in the car!

The next day, I was finally feeling good enough to eat again! By that time I lost a whopping 8 pounds! Drew was still throwing up and had plenty of dirty diapers for me to change! Dennis called home from work saying he didn't feel too hot...he ended up throwing up at work twice before coming home. So that's when I decided, yes we had a virus! Then we found out that Lolo, and Tita Janette were sick too. And then a day later, we found out that Ashley, Sisi and Keith all got sick while at DisneyWorld! We thought that Emmie got passed it, but turned out she ended up with a mild case of the runs. It was a rough night when she caught the bug since she couldn't sleep with the tummy ache and if she was up, Drew was up! I spent the whole night running in and out of their rooms. She spent the next day sleeping, waking just for a few minutes then sleeping again. Even Baba caught the bug when she got home after I thought we were all fully recovered. Horrible virus that went everywhere and I felt horrible for bringing on the entire family (although no one from my brother's house got sick)! When the McCullough's got back from Disney, we took the whole family out to eat as an apology!

Although the virus wrecked havoc on our Christmas, we didn't let it spoil the upcoming New Year celebration. Dennis stopped by a fireworks stand and got some sparklers and poppers! We lit them up prior to the heading over to Lam's for the annual NYE's party! This year we were Lam's only guests since he planned it so last minute everyone else had plans (shows you how cool we are, right)! We had a good time over there since we got to play some Xbox Kinect! I'll be looking to buy one of those soon! We thought Drew was finally over his vomiting but he ended up throwing up all over me around 930. We packed it up and were home before 10. Emmie stayed up late enough to watch the ball drop in NY! Dennis and I didn't even make it to midnight, but we still had a New Year's kiss before we went to sleep!

It was a tiring two weeks off work but it was a lot of fun nonetheless! We have a lot to look forward to this year, so I'll try to keep this updated more often! February is a BIG month for us!