Almost Christmas

Christmas with the kids is always funny and tiring.

*We've had our tree fiasco's, but those are mostly over.
*I've had to re-wrap a few presents thanks to a busy one year old.
*We've attempted driving to look at lights, but that hasn't gone so well. (the kids fight the whole time)
*We've gone caroling to about 10 people.
*We have not done Secret Santa drops like we've done in so many past years.
*My 11 year old is driving me nuts.
*My one year old loves to see the lights on the houses, but her favorite thing to see are the lit up snowmen.
*Because of our location in the world, the weather has been quite mild and the youngest kids have been spending their Christmas break outside riding scooters with no shoes and no coats. It's made caroling very pleasant.
*We hung lights on the house, but they look pretty pathetic as every strand has only half of the lights working.
*I took my two youngest kids to Target early one morning and let them play in the toy aisles for about an hour. My 4 year old son would finish looking down one aisle and ask me if we can move on to the next "island".
*My 6 year old has had to re-write her wish list several times as she keeps loosing it. Good thing it's short and easy to remember what is on it.
*We've had two Secret Santa's visiting our house for over a week now. One of them is feeding our spirit with a piece to a Nativity set each night along with a poem or story to go along with the piece. The other Secret Santa is feeding our taste buds as they have provided us with very tasty treats. I have no idea who is doing either and I don't care to find out (I love not knowing). I just wish I could tell them thank you.
*We are working hard to clean because grandparents will be arriving tomorrow night.
*I'll still have a grocery trip to make tomorrow or Thursday for those last minute things.
*Did I mention my 11 year old is making me crazy? He is. I hope this is a phase that he is going through. My biggest worry is that the phase is called "pre-teen" and it's going to be worse when it becomes a teenage phase.

It's my last Christmas with a one year old. It's sad, but I love how into the Christmas lights my little Peanut is. Watching Christmas through her eyes is really exciting.