Three Girls and a Boy: Christmas

Okay, well I failed at that little exercise, didn't I? When I pictured 12 Days of blogging I thought I'd be waking up in my bed in Maui, writing a blog post each morning to get caught up on life, all the while fooling would-be house robbers that I was actually home. But guess what? I didn't really feel like it, and I kind of stopped caring if someone stole all my stuff because being a beach bum sounded much better.

So now it's really time to get my blog on. I'm starting with Christmas because it just happened yesterday. And since I spent much of yesterday working on photobooks of Maui, I'm kind of tired of looking at those photos.

We had so much fun last year, we decided to make Chinese food and the lights at the Botannical Gardens our Christmas Eve tradition. The kids really enjoy the lights--I remember freezing my butt off in the crowds at Temple Square every year, but this is a little less of an undertaking. It's only a couple miles from our house and takes about 20 minutes to walk around the gardens, and the kids have a little scavenger hunt sheet to find the animals in the exhibits. It was rainy and muddy, but even that isn't too miserable at 48 degrees.

Then we headed to the chinese restaurant we discovered last year: Spiced Truly Chinese Cuisine. They have a new menu this year with photos. Photos of things like "Fish head soup," "Pickled chili chicken claw" and "Sliced pig ears." Dishes are rated by two kinds of spiciness: hot spicy and numbing spicy. Despite those horrifying options, it really is the best Chinese food we've ever eaten. (We choose "zero" on both numbing and hot spicy, because even zero ranks a 3 or 4 on our wimpy tongues.) But right after ordering, Madeline decided she needed to puke. And since Kolby had puked earlier in the week, I don't think it had anything to do with the photos of chicken claws in spicy sauce.

So Christmas Eve and Christmas day ended up being very mellow for us. We hung out at home in pajamas and watched movies, played Wii and the new Kinect, and talked to family and friends on the phone. The only puking episode was on the way home from dinner Christmas Eve. Maddie got to enjoy her Chinese leftovers while we ate ham, brussels sprouts, and sweet potatoes for dinner last night. She couldn't have been more pleased with herself.