Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown!

Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year! I have to admit, it's kind of nice to get past all of the holidays and get back into our routine. Today I'm going to take down all the Christmas decorations and pack them up and clean! Here's to starting the New Year fresh and clean.

We had a great Christmas, Siah was very good traveler. He only cried when he was tired and slept almost the whole way when we flew. I was really worried about whether or not he would cry the whole way and everyone on the plane would hate us, but he was wonderful. It was so good to be with our families again. I forgot how much I missed everyone. Josiah got more gifts than he could need, and I only see that getting worse in the future. Of course, we had to leave about half of them (the noisy half!) with the grandparents because we didn't have enough room to pack them all. :-) That's my strategy. Only have enough suitcase room for the amount of presents you want to take home. Otherwise, I see my whole house turning into a Toys R Us! My favorite gift was the book my dad wrote for Josiah. He wrote a story called "I Live Here and You Live There". He painted pictures of Josiah that I'd put online, and a friend is sending them away to be made into a children's book. I tried to get him to give me the originals, but my Mom already called them. I'm slightly bitter, but he promised to get me prints. The picture is page one. All of the pictures are watercolor and amazing. Here's the story they go with:

I live here and you live there, but that's not the way it used to be. There was a time not long ago you didn't live so far from me.

You lived here and I lived there when you lived near my house. But where you are is where I was when I lived in a different house.

Where you are is not so far when you are all grown up like me. But when you are small and cannot drive, that's not the way it seems.

I love you and you don't know that soon you will come home. Then I'll see you and you'l see me and we'll play until you go.

Now don't be sad when it's time to go and you all leave and fly away. One day I will come to where you are, and again we'll laugh and play.

So where you live right now you see is really not that far. A phone, a truck or my motorcycle can get me to where you are.

And as you grow we'll stay in touch, we're family that's what we are!
My little girl is your mama and that makes me ...

YOUR GRANDPA!

They read it to us at the end of Christmas with my family, and everyone was crying. I can't wait to get the book.

On another note, I have an amazing husband. Almost as soon we got home TJ got a really bad cold. He was miserable for two days (which wasn't fun for me, because I had two grumpy boys. Josiah didn't understand why we didn't want to hold him all the time like those people we just finished visiting) but now he's finally over it. Naturally, as soon as he got over it, I caught it. It really hit me yesterday, but today I'm feeling pretty gross. I'm hoping if I keep up the vitamin c pills and tissue action I can get through it as quickly as TJ, although his immune system is ridiculously quick. And even though I have all these plans to clean and be energetic today, he told me to get as many naps as I could today and last night he took care of the baby while I holed up in our bedroom with a box of tissues. The worst part of being sick is trying to keep Josiah from getting it. I know it's kind of hopeless, he's going to get it, but I'm trying anyway. I'm sure you can appreciate how hard it is not to kiss the biggest cheeks on the planet. Especially when he's giggling and smiling at you. I'm dying here. Hugging and kissing the back of his head is really not enough. (Funny story: TJ can't get over how big Josiah's head is, so he measured his head and it's actually wider than his body! I keep reminding TJ that his Papaw said TJ didn't grow into his head until he was 5. Siah's new nickname is Charlie Brown.)