When I was put on bed rest at the beginning of December it put our Christmas plans in jeopardy. We always go to San Antonio to spend Christmas at my mom's house. My grandmother and uncle were planning to come down there and Greg was coming from Kentucky. But the doctor insisted that I not leave town during Christmas. She wanted me close to the hospital and close to her if anything went wrong. So with only four weeks to spare my mom set out to move the entire Christmas celebration to Austin. No small feat considering our house is by no means big enough to host six adults and one three year old.
Mom found a vacation rental house on homeaway.com that was close by our house, had four bedrooms, two living rooms and a full kitchen. It was also available and reasonably priced. So she emailed the owner to see if she'd allow us to put up a Christmas tree I the house during our stay (you can't have Christmas morning without a Christmas tree). The owner agreed so we had a place where we could all be together.
On the 23rd everyone made their way to Austin. Mom, Richard, Greg, and Oliver (who had been spending the weekend with my parents) from San Antonio and my grandmother from Midland (my uncle had been dealing with his own health problems and wasn't able to join us). We gathered at our house until the 3:30 check in time at which point Operation Christmas was in full swing. We spent the afternoon and evening decorating the tree, eating Vietnamese food from Sunflower and enjoying each other's company. The house was perfect with tons of room for us all to spread out and a nice big backyard for Oliver to play in.
We spent Christmas Eve hanging out at the house (obviously). Oliver and I took a nice long nap together in the afternoon. That evening we introduced Oliver to the movie Polar Express. He loved it (as we knew he would. He's been on quite the train kick lately). He opened his Christmas pj's and a new book (Pete the Cat Saves Christmas. It was quite a proud moment for us since he opened it and then exclaimed: Yes! A new book!). He dictated a letter for me to write to Santa and set out some cookies and snacks for the big guy and his reindeer and the headed to bed.
Oliver, Brian, and I were all in the same room Christmas Eve so as soon as Oliver woke up Christmas morning, it fell to Brian and I to keep him occupied until after seven when he could go downstairs. The first thing he wanted to do when he woke up was see if Santa had eaten the snacks he left so keeping him in the rooms was a bit of a challenge but we managed. When it was time he headed downstairs and was amazed to see that his snacks had, in fact, been eaten and that Santa had left him a note. And then the present frenzy began. Oliver was obviously very good this year - Santa took good care of him.
We all spent the morning opening presents and watching Oliver enjoy his new toys. That afternoon Oliver and I took another nice long nap. In the afternoon he continued to play with his new stuff. We set up his new train set and he played with it for hours. Seriously. I've never seen him play at the same activity for that long. It's like the best babysitter ever. We had a lovely Christmas dinner of prime rib and twice baked potatoes and dijon braised brussels sprouts and after Oliver went to bed all the adults had fun playing Apples to Apples. It was a great Christmas and I'm so grateful for all of my mom's hard work to make sure it happened.
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