Merry Christmas!

Corina this morning: "Mommy, snow looks like cream"

Christmas was great! The morning was especially great! We really enjoyed the simplicity of our little family as we did our Christmas morning exactly how we wanted to. Corina was so grateful for her gifts. She just continues to be such a sweet girl. She was so excited to get her Swimming baby from Santa and her Tinkerbell Fairies and a few other things (not that the items are important). It was just so fun as a parent to watch our kids...with each year it just keeps getting better. Rylec really liked his new toy cars...he totally knew how to rev them on the kitchen floor even though he's just 1...it was so cute.

After the morning we headed on over to my parents and were so lucky to have ALL of my "carter" side of the family there. We enjoyed delicious food and visiting and spoiling of the grandparents and great-grandparents even though they weren't there physically they were there in spirit. We did our sibling family exchange as well. Such nice gifts from everyone!
My parents got everyone gift certificates to the movies so they offered all of us girls with our husbands to go out while they watched all 5 grand kids. I'll be honest I had an emotional outburst over my anxiety of ruining my kids schedules and knowing they probably weren't gonna do to well. My sisters were more positive and I knew it sounded fun, but for some reason I just was worried...plus I kinda liked the idea of just visiting at home. I know I can be a party-pooper. So anyway. We didn't make it to the movies til the 10:00 showing to see "The Curious Case of Benjamen Button". All kids were in there Jammie's so we all had hope that they would fall asleep in a make shift bed at my parents house. So we left...we enjoyed the movie...we yawned...and we were very tired when we got out of the movie at 1:00 am and home around 1:30. And when we got home all kids, but one were STILL AWAKE AHHHH! And to add to the ciaos we had family pictures the next morning at 10:30. Well needless to say we all paid for it...some worse then others...my heart really goes out to my sister Rach and her husband they were very sick with the flu and my husband congested with a pounding headache.
So why am I griping...I'll give another reminder...this is a blog i know but its mostly my journal...so I wanna gripe...just a little.
Really really I am so grateful for the opportunity and I wanted to be hunky dory fine with the whole idea, but I just had a hard time. I had a hard time telling my sisters and my Mom and Dad that I didn't want to go because of fear that they would be upset at me or that I would be the only one not willing to "cooperate". But look what happened anyway...I just gotta know...how do other families do it? How do you balance every families needs as your family grows and each child gets married, cleaves unto their spouse, has their own children, and their ever growing differences. I love my family soo much, but I honestly hope we can get back a comforting relaxed feeling next time we get together and not feel like we are walking on eggshells. Something has changed or maybe I've changed. I'll tell you one thing I know for sure I'm not perfect and I hope I can do something better next time to help the situation...I do look forward also to a time when there wont be such young babies crying all the time making all of us Moms/Sisters so tense.