Preparing to Travel for Christmas

We arrived home from Asheboro on Sunday afternoon. I had all of Monday to get things done for our Christmas vacay. I was stressed and overwhelmed. I spent much of Sunday evening in my mom's sewing room working on a reversible longall and jumper for the twins to wear at Disney. I poured some good hours into making these outfits that would make our Disney trip picture perfect... I never ended up getting them done and it was ok. My biggest regret was missing out on precious holiday time with my kids :(

I did have a great time however hanging out at my parents house with just my sisters. Sunday evening I wrangled my youngest sister, Bo into running a gazillion errands with me (including doing a craigslist deal for a brand new bob stroller in a fort mill parking lot) and we had fun just kicking off the holiday together. As a mom with a family of my own, sometimes its refreshing to slip back into the role of daughter and sister and just hangout like we used to when we all lived under one roof. We got back my parents house in time for takeout Thai food. My mom was at a Christmas party and both my sisters and me had a fabulous time chatting with my dad over dinner. After dinner we had some great conversations about civil rights, religion, and homosexuality. You can tell how much we had all matured. We surprisingly didn't fight at all (we are all very opinionated and have no problem stating (and defending) our viewpoint) and I'm so thankful to have sisters and deep conversations.

I got home sometime around 1am and was excited to take the kids to Santa the next morning. We arrived at Southpark bright and early to meet the big guy. Both babies HATED it. I loved the crying Santa pics! We took the kids back home and Jay watched them while I headed back over to my mom's to sew.

This one is blurry. I can't find the professional one that we paid for on my computer. I'll update later when I do!

I tried so hard to make these clothes for the kids but I am just not a seamstress. I can applique and monogram pretty well but sewing is just not my thing. After working all day (I even cancelled a trip uptown to see the singing bears because I was so deteremined) I decided to call it quits with the longall and jumper I was making around 10pm and just switched over to monogramming and appliqueing some blank t-shirts I had laying around. 

While I spent the afternoon, evening, and night sewing, Jay tried his best to get the laundry done and pack for Florida. I have always traveled for Christmas and am SO used to the chaos that ensues while getting ready for a big road trip. I'm used to parents that set up the DVD player, arm us with loads of new movies, prep snacks for the ride, and pack the minivan like level 20 of tetris, making sure that all medications, phone chargers, and all the little random things are included on the packing list. Jay is not. Bless his heart. He tried hard. I got home around 11pm and we packed until midnight. I made lists upon lists to ensure that we were out of the house by 4:30am. We thought it was all good around midnight until we realized we needed to move the carseats to the 3rd row and that installing them forward facing was way different than rear facing. Thank God for youtube and Britax instructional videos. We finally went to sleep exhausted at 1am only to have our alarms go off 3 hours later....