Christmas Day

Wow.

It's a little after 9 p.m. on Christmas night, Jude just went up to bed and I'm sitting downstairs, in my "man chair," drinking a glass of wine and relaxing after a hectic, exhausting day. You know what, though? I wouldn't have it any other way. Jude, John Patrick and I are blessed not to have to travel out of town for the holidays. More importantly, we're blessed to have our families here to celebrate Christmas with us.

Jude and I were up late, last night, wrapping gifts and preparing for today's holiday festivities. I didn't go up to bed until well after 1 a.m. When I checked on John Patrick, I was a bit alarmed to discover he had picked up a head cold. He wasn't sleeping soundly and, instead, was sniffling and coughing. I woke Jude up and she confirmed he had sounded the same when she had checked on him an hour or so earlier. I didn't sleep well, worrying about him.

This morning, early, we had Christmas with John Patrick. He particularly enjoyed "unwrapping" gifts he received from the two of us. It appeared that, to him, the objects inside the wrapping paper were just put there to give us something to wrap the wrapping paper around. He really got a kick out of tearing the paper, then trying to eat it.

Jude's mom and dad and her brother, James, came over to our house after attending the Christmas morning church service at the Cathedral (where Jude and I were married). We opened gifts together and spent some nice, quiet family time for a couple of hours. Then, about noon, Jude, John Patrick and I packed up and drove over to the clubhouse at River Plantation in Bellevue, where her grandparents live. There, we visited with her grandparents and various members of her family and had a wonderful meal together. We especially enjoyed seeing Jude's cousin Colleen and her husband, Tom Blanchard, in from Charlotte, NC. We don't get to visit with them often, so it was nice to spend some time with them.

Next, it was home again for a quick nap, then back on the road to my mom's house about 4:30 p.m. We had another meal with my family, which was nice, then opened gifts. It's fun to watch the latest generation of children enjoy Christmas (David and Stacy Clark's daughter and son, Hope and Will, Brad and Teresa Miles' twins, Ben and Sarah, and now, John Patrick).

In a reenactment of one of my finer moments from Christmases past, I brought "silly string" and offered Brad's son, Ben, five dollars to spray everyone in the room, as they opened their presents. He's probably a year or two away from realizing the value of a dollar, because I couldn't convince him to buy in, so to speak. David's daughter, Hope, was game, although she's actually younger than Ben. She had a hard time operating the can of "silly string" and I didn't help matters by spraying her in the face, accidentally, while I trying to instruct her in the finer points of "silly string" warfare. It's always funny until somebody gets hurt, I guess. She was fine and, in the end, the kids had fun trying to avoid me spraying them.

We left my mom's house and arrived home with John Patrick about 7 p.m. Jude fed him, then she and I opened our stockings to see what Santa had left for us. Forgetting that I was the one who liked malted milk balls, not Jude, I encouraged her to try the ones I had picked up for her at the Fresh Market. No worries, I ate several and they were quite tasty. Then it was bath time for John Patrick and a snack before bed. Just to show us how much he enjoyed Christmas day, John Patrick threw up all over Jude as she was feeding him before bed.

Overall, a successful day, I think.