Well, the day has come to a close.... And a long day it's been....!
I guess I will start with last night.... Shawn had to work yesterday and got home at about 4:30 or so. We went over to my Aunt's house in Gleed to have Christmas with the Heilman side of the fam (my mom's side of the family). It's a lot different now that my Grandma is no longer with us. My cousin Trish came up from San Francisco with her boyfriend Joseph. They announced their engagement!! YAY! I am SO excited for them! She is my only girl cousin on that side of the family (that I actually ever see anyway) and we have always been pretty close and I think of her more as a sister since we both had 3 brothers to live with growing up! She is 6 years older than me, which is about what my mom and her sister (Trish's mom) are apart. Anyway, it was a fun filled night and we had lots of food of course and had the Christmas Story on the whole time of course! (a tradition in the Heilman family on Christmas Eve gatherings). Here are a few pictures from the night:
Opening a gift from Uncle Tim and Aunt Cheryl
KaeLee playing with all the cars!
KaeLee opening a gift from Trish and Auntie
Silly Girl!
Here, we are all busy scratching our lottery scratch tickets! I was a big loser! :-(
Grandpa and KaeLee
Jake and KaeLee
Christmas Day:
We started off waking KaeLee up at 6:30. This was a decision made purely to ensure she got a morning nap before beginning our long day. This was an agonizing decision, however, because she woke up at 1:30 in the morning and was burning up. She had a fever of 99.5. (her normal temp is about 97) I gave her some tylenol and rocked her backed to sleep. At 6:30, her temperature was 100.5, so I gave her some more tylenol and a bottle, then we opened our gifts and our stockings. We got some cute pictures.... till the camera went dead. Yup. It went dead on Christmas morning. We have such great luck. At least we got a couple of good pictures, I suppose. :) Here are the pictures of Christmas morning at our house... opening Santa's gifts!
Our Christmas Tree!
KaeLee in her Christmas outfit!
KaeLee in her Christmas outfit again!
KaeLee opening her gift from Santa!
Daddy opening a gift
Mommy opening a gift
YAY!! KaeLee got some new balls!
Opening her gift
Our happy family on Christmas morning!
KaeLee was pretty excited about her new snacks in her stocking!
KaeLee with her stocking from Santa!
KaeLee then got to take a 2 hour nap, while Shawn and I got ourselves ready, packed the car up and ate our Christmas morning cinnamon rolls. Yum-O! When KaeLee woke up, her temp was up again to 101.5, but we are hoping maybe she's just finally getting some teeth... so we gave her some more tylenol and some orajel. We went up to my mom's for Christmas with my brothers. Except for Tim, who decided not to partake in Christmas morning this year... (whatever). KaeLee got to open even more gifts, including a new dolly and a stroller to put her in and push around. Except, she didn't like having her dolly in it. She just kept taking it out and wanted to hold the doll in one hand and push the stroller in the other. It was pretty funny. I was pretty excited about my new gift of the Shark! Now I can actually vacuum our house before Shawn's family comes into town tomorrow! haha. And KaeLee can have a clean floor to crawl on finally! (now that I can clean the floor, I'm sure she will be walking all over and not caring about a clean floor...) Shawn got a miter saw and a miter saw stand! Wow! That'll come in handy when he cuts the molding for Hannah's room next week! My mom and dad also thought it would be a fun idea to get all us kids a fake pet hamster. Yes. A hamster. I believe they are called zhu-zhus. These things crawl around on the floor and make noises and such. They even sell accessories like hamster tubes and spinning wheel and more! Crazy! The dogs really got a kick out of them and went a bit pyscho. They weren't sure if they were real or what. They just wanted to pounce on them and eat them. Not sure what we'll do with these new pets of ours, but thanks mom and dad! :) Here are some pictures from this family Christmas:
KaeLee on the go with her new stroller!
The dogs loved the zhu-zhu!
Shawn opening his miter saw stand
Is this where the bottle goes?
Oh! It's a doll!!
Our family!
After our morning at mom's, we headed up the hill to the Sauve side of Christmas. That was quite fun, but we sure were missing the Carson's this year! I heard they actually had lots of snow back in Oklahoma though! We didn't get much of white Christmas here.... Though I was actually grateful because trying to get up Aunt Paula's hill with snow on the ground is a nightmare for my little car... I think it took us about 4 tries last year!
We had tons and tons of food... my goodness! Got the news that my cousin and his girlfriend are expecting.... um, congratulations? haha. (long story) And KaeLee had lots of fun playing with her (second?) cousins. (my cousins' kids) Though she wasn't so eager to get down and play this time as she usually is. She was quite content in someones lap all day. Probably had something to do with her fever. (Oh yeah, Tim and Cheryl were missing as well, so no Jake for KaeLee to play with). We did our gift exchange, which was a lot of fun as usual.... though not too many gifts were stolen this year.
KaeLee, Shawn, Uncle Kory, and Grandpa
KaeLee and her new SUV
Grandma and KaeLee
Angie and KaeLee
KaeLee and Cayla, her second cousin
After about 4 hours up at the Sauve's, we headed for my dad's house for the Bechard family Christmas. On the way, we took a detour and took a tour of Terrace Heights. KaeLee had fallen asleep in the car and we wanted her to get some sort of nap! She only got a half hour nap before we finally just had to wake her up and go inside. Poor girl! There was quite a houseful at my dad's! And his Christmas lights looked amazing! (we missed them last year, since he couldn't do much because of his new pacemaker) There were desserts galore... OH MY!! I don't think I have ever seen that many desserts in one place! We had Spaghetti for dinner (Pam's spaghetti is just delicious!!) and then pigged out on those desserts!
My brother, Teddy, proposed to his girlfriend, Erica. I think she said yes.... haha. I think she was quite embarrassed to have it be done in front of everyone. But it was quite sweet to see a softer side of Teddy!
Unfortunately, this was my Grandma Bechard's last Christmas. Her cancer is back and has spread a lot. It is quite aggressive this time and in too many places. The doctor (which she has the best there is!) says the chemo is not working. She has a meeting on Monday to talk about end details and all the kids (my step mom and her siblings) will be there. After talking with her at Dad's, she's pretty nervous about the decisions she has to make. She is a trooper though and very tough. She has so many people around her, supporting and loving her through it all. She was tell ling me that Carlos, the Bishop, has been to visit her at her home 3 times lately. She was pretty excited about that! (She and my Grandpa are very involved in the Catholic Diocese here in Yakima and have been for many, many years)
KaeLee was quite tired the whole time we were there, but she had lots of fun watching her cousins play around her. (they're still a little big to get down and play with... they are definitely BOYS and would have trampled all over her! Dad and Pam have great taste when it came to KaeLee's gifts... they knew exactly what to get her! They got her some little cars (which she's really into lately) and the farm sounds barn (which is what Shawn and I had gotten her... haha). She loved them all of course!
Playing with the nieces... Vanessa and Layla
KaeLee with Grandma and Grandpa Beaudry
KaeLee and her cousin Layla
Vaness decorating Grandpa Bechard with all the ribbons
Some of the family and the big mess from the grandkids' toys!
KaeLee opening her farm sounds from Grandma and Grandpa
It was such a long day for not only KaeLee, but us as well. But even though we go so many places on Christmas, I wouldn't trade the time spent with family for anything! I enjoyed everyone and we had a lot of fun catching up with people. We are truly blessed to have such a large family and we try to make sure we get around to them all, especially at Christmas. The only family we didn't get to see this year is the Beaudrys. And Shawn's Grandpa Ron and the Stephenson family. I guess with 8 sides of the family, someone is bound to be missed.
We got home at about 7:45 and just crashed! KaeLee got a bath and went right to bed and Shawn and I followed shortly after. Now this morning has come, and I decided to try and finish this blog instead of clean the bathrooms, vacuum, do the dishes, do the laundry, pick up all the Christmas gifts and find them homes, dust, frost my cookies, take a shower..... oh the list goes on and on of what I need to do today before Shawn's mom, Jon, grandma and grandpa Garrett, Alyssa, Christina and Topanga get here! I suppose I should probably save this blog (again... I actually started it last night, but couldn't stay awake too long) and get a move on it this morning! The list above doesn't even involve all the food prep I need to do for our Christmas Dinner tomorrow (peel/cut potatoes, wash and cut veggies and fruit, peel and slice nearly 2 dozen eggs, go on a grocery run, frost cookies, figure out how to make a turkey... and on and on and on.) Okay. now I am overwhelmed. I think I will go get started and post pictures later. This will just have to be a 2, maybe 3 day blog in the making... Well.... Bye for now and I will be back soon!
