{krause christmas}

This past weekend, we celebrated Christmas with Barclay's side of the family. A little early maybe, but still within the bracket of acceptable calendar days, I think. In fact, I was just reading a really fascinating blog post this morning written by Juliette, who is Dutch, about her Christmas traditions growing up, and Santa (Sinterklaas) came to them on the 5th of December. So maybe we actually just did it right for the first time in our lives.

But the point is not that.

The point is that we drove the two and a half hours to Saskatoon, checked into the Sheraton, and partied like rockstars. Kind of. Like, the kind of rockstar who goes to bed at a decent time and is quiet and respectful of all the other rockstars and who drinks decaf Starbucks and cleans up after him or herself.

The kind of rockstar who is more like a parent.

It was fun though. There was a water park and excessive amounts of sugar and coffee and takeout Vietnamese food which meant no cooking or major clean-up afterward. That is exactly my idea of a holiday. And Sullivan got to have snacks in his playpen, which was kind of luxurious for him.

Plus, he got to play with his older cousins a bunch. He thinks they're great. Grammy might be the only one smiling in these pictures, but that's only because I have horrible timing, not because no one's having fun. I hope.

All thirteen of us hung out in a hotel room and at the water park, and on "Christmas Day" (December 6) we all headed over to Barclay's sister's house for presents where Sullivan had his first experience with wrapping paper. I think it was a positive one. He got a pack of Hot Wheels cars and, upon opening it, gave every single one a kiss. (That's his thing right now. Whenever Barclay calls from work, I put him on speaker phone and Sully comes zooming across the room to kiss the screen.)

It was a different way to do Christmas, but fun different. Now we have Christmas on the farm with my family to look forward to, and Christmas just the three of us in our little house. So much Christmas! So little December!

On that note, I'm going to go put on some Vince Guiraldi and wrap a few gifts. Ho, ho, ho.

(PS: We missed you, Adams family.)