We had a nice thanksgiving with Granny and Bryan visiting which wraps up our houseguest visits for the year. The boys love having visitors and it was really nice being able to get out to see a few movies! No time to exhale as we were immediately thrown into the Christmas season.
Since Jennie and Bryan's departure we've been hit in rapid succession with this horrible paraflu or virus of some sort. I had loads of plans to get things done and start doing special Christmas things with the boys and once the Green Goo monster hit everything has stood still. 
So far Peter has been the only one to come out unscathed but I know his number is up and he'll start feeling horrible the night before we have to leave for Nebraska.
This weekend we opened gifts from our family in New Zealand and Grant and Henry got their gifts from us. Since we're gone every Christmas we have to do this early enough that the boys get to play with the things for a bit before we leave. We hadn't put any of the presents under the tree until they went to bed Friday night. 
When Grant came out Saturday morning we went to go make sure he hadn't ripped into them. I found him under the dining room table lying down with tears in his eyes. Not the response I thought we'd get. After asking what was wrong and asking if he saw the presents he said. "None of them are for me.. all for other people". In Grant's school they use their names on everything and he's gotten quite good at recognizing it. So on all the tags from people They either started with "To:" or "Happy Christmas" and so he thought they were ALL for other people. It broke my heart. So I had to go over and show him in the middle of the tag the letters I knew he'd recognize. Then we got the look of glee we were expecting. We then had to keep him from ripping into them until Henry was awake. So Grant ran full speed down the hallway and turned on the lights and yelled "HENRY's AWAKE!!!! HE IS!!! COME SEE!" At which point a very groggy Henry popped up to see what all the commotion was. The boys both loved all of their gifts and we're very fortunate to have such loving family members. Later on we took him downstairs to show him one of his presents from Gramma and Grampa too. 
On Sunday we had tickets for the Santa Train. At this point Henry and I both felt horrible and the weather was SOOO cold for this area. Like 20 degrees!!! So we went back and forth on whether to go or not. In the end we made a last minute decision to have Peter take Grant and Henry and I would stay at home and get rest. Peter said that on the train Grant told him that he was going to ask for a GeoTraxx train set. This was one of the gifts that Grant had opened yesterday so Peter had pointed out that he didn't need another one and Grant replied "Not for me daddy, for you.. I have one but you need one too" and when he went and sat on Santa's lap that is indeed what he asked him for - a Geotraxx trainset for his daddy. 
That boy has a heart of gold. So the Santa Train was fun and Peter said he was a bit awestruck when he first saw Santa but as you can see from the pics he warmed up to him right away.
Grant is very excited about our upcoming trip in an airplane to go and see Gramma and Grampa.. and his dad and I are already stressing out about predicted bad driving weather on both ends of our flight.
I'll probably try to blog a bit from Nebraska..
Merry Christmas!!
Misty
