Christmas in Utah Part 2

On Saturday Morning (Christmas Eve)  We got up early and headed up to Salt Lake.  Cindy and AJ are currently living with AJ's sister Addie while they save for a house, and she offered for us to stay there for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.  Shortly after arriving, Cindy and I decided to go to the grocery store and Target to pick up some last minute gifts and ingredients for meals for that evening and for breakfast the next morning.  We left the kids with Brandon and AJ and headed on our way.  Our first stop was Smiths to get groceries.  We started loading our cart with lots of groceries and goodies, when it became apparent to  Cindy that something didn't feel right with her.  She goes into greater detail on her blog which you can read HERE.

When she realized that her condition, placenta previa, had taken a dangerous turn, we left our cart full of our groceries in the middle of the store and quickly exited, not quite sure what to do.  Those next few minutes felt like hours, and I will never forget how scared I felt.  I did not stop praying for the next hour straight.  We got a hold of AJ, and Addie drove him to meet us at Smith's.  I remember standing outside of the car anxiously waiting to see their car, wondering what could possibly be taking so long, checking on Cindy, and feeling completely terrified.  They finally arrived and I will never forget the look on AJ's face as he rushed to Cindy's side.  I jumped in the car with Addie and we decided to head to the hospital to meet them.  Right before AJ had gotten there, Cindy said "I can't feel her moving"  I could not get those words out of my head as we drove to the hospital.  It felt like it took us an eternity to get there.  AJ and Cindy took a different  way, and I just kept thinking that we should have called an ambulance, and that if anything happened to Cindy or the baby I would never forgive myself for not insisting that we do.  We finally arrived and I was relieved to see Cindy and AJ's car there, and that they hadn't had the same traffic problems that we had.  (AJ later told me that he had to be driving close to 100 mph) We had to wait in the lobby for a few minutes but when AJ's parents arrived we headed back to labor and delivery.  I was certain she was having an emergency c-section, since that is what her doctor told her throughout her pregnancy would happen if this situation arose. Walking down the hall, my heart was pounding and we soon saw AJ  walking towards us.  His eyes were red, and the first thing he said was she's OK, and the baby is OK.  That was music to my ears.  It turns out that they had gotten her stabilized and determined that the baby was OK, and they were monitoring her and the baby and holding off on the c- section for now.  A few minutes later they let us go in to see her. It was determined that she would need to stay in the hospital at least overnight.  So that meant she would be spending Christmas in the hospital.  Not exactly what we had planned for, but at least she was OK, and so was the baby. 

 What an emotionally draining afternoon!  But it was still Christmas Eve and I had kids back at the house so excited about all of the things that we had planned to do that day. I visited with Cindy for about an hour, and then AJ drove me back to Addie's house.  I still felt so emotional about all the past few hours events, but I was determined to still make it a good Christmas still.  Since we had left all of our groceries in the middle of Smith's, I headed off to another grocery store (I don't think I can bring myself to go to Smiths again)  to pick up some things that we needed.  At Smiths we had found some cute cookie decorating kits, and I was sure that this other grocery store would too.  Well, I was so disappointed to see that they were sold out of everything.  I decided to ask the lady behind the bakery counter if they happened to have any left anywhere in the store.  She said they didn't.  She must have sensed my disappointment, because as I was walking away she called to me, saying that they did have some sugar cookies behind the counter that they were giving out for free samples that she would sell to me.  I was so thrilled.  We originally had planned to bake sugar cookies, but with all of the days events we just didn't have time so this was perfect.  When I got back to the house, the kids were bouncing off the walls, so excited that it was Christmas Eve and that Santa was coming soon. Tori and Levi were very concerned about putting our stockings up, so we dug through our stuff that we had brought and found them.  They had to be creative in order to fit them on the  fireplace =)

 After that, I decided that I better start wrapping a few presents, so I wouldn't have so many to wrap that night.  Cindy and I had both not wrapped anything because we planned on doing it all together that night =(

I thought I would wait until after dinner to have the kids decorate the sugar cookies, but decided to get them out then and do it.  The kids were so excited to decorate some cookies for Santa.


Right when I snapped this picture, Lyla snuck a bite of one of the cookies =)



 Everyone each frosted a couple, and then I let them each eat one.  Right when we were finishing that up, Addie called down from upstairs saying that she had just finished making a batch of homemade chocolate chip cookies, and asked if we wanted some.  Even though the kids were all sugared up from the sugar cookies, I thought, what the heck, it's Christmas Eve!  So we headed up to get a little more sugar in our systems =)

We had planned on cooking a big Christmas Eve dinner, but decided with everything going on that we would go out to dinner instead.  We headed to Macaroni Grill and had a yummy dinner there.

I had to add this picture in! LOL  I am sure Lyla will love this picture when she is older =)

After dinner, AJ took Lyla to see Cindy at the hospital and we headed back to Addie's house. We told the kids, that since we were staying with someone else for Christmas, that we got to participate in some of their fun traditions.  One of which is that Santa's Elves deliver new pajamas  on Christmas Eve.  They were so excited to come home and find brand new jammies waiting for them!

 Brandon didn't want in on the picture, but he had some skeleton pajamas that matched Levi's =)

 Every year we get a new Christmas book to open on Christmas Eve.  We have got quite the collection going, and the kids always are so excited to see what book we will be adding to our collection each year. 

 This year it was a cute book called "Snow Angels"

 About this time, AJ and Lyla got back, and our kids were so excited to show Lyla the pajamas that the elves had left for her.

 The kids all gathered around while I read them our new book.

Such a sweet picture =)

AJ did a great job of taking care of Lyla while Cindy was in the hospital and making things as normal for her as possible =)

 After a long eventful day it was finally time for bed.  Christmas Eve is probably one of the only nights where I don't have to fight the kids to go to bed.  They know that the sooner they go to sleep, the sooner Santa comes!  We set up the kids sleeping bags in Lyla's room.  We thought Lyla would just sleep in her bed, but she immediately snuggled in next to Alexis on the floor =)

 Daddy tried to get away with sleeping in there with them too! =)

Lyla had a bit of a hard time falling asleep, so AJ layed in there for a while, and eventually brought her into his bed to try and get her to sleep.  He started feeling really sick  (he thinks from a corn dog he ate earlier, but I suspect the events from the day were catching up with him)  He left the room for a minute, and he said that he heard Lyla calling loudly, "Lexi!"  Alexis, went in there and crawled in bed with her, and a minute later he heard Lyla calling out, "Tori!"  So Tori went in there and crawled in there with her too.  When AJ came back into the room they were all snuggled together sleeping soundly =)

Then the wrapping marathon began.  It was definitely not what we had planned and I missed my sister being there so badly!  I was so glad that she was in the hospital getting the care she needed, but it was so hard to not have her there.  I know Brandon missed having her there too, because that meant he had to wrap the presents he had gotten me by himself.  He was totally planning on having Cindy wrap them like she did last year.  He tried to talk me into wrapping them, but I didn't let him get away with that =)

It was a different kind of Christmas Eve, but we made the best with the situation at hand.  I was so worried that my kids would feel the stress of the situation and not have as fun of a Christmas, but that night Tori turned to me and said, "This is the best Christmas ever!  Sometimes I forget that it's the simple things that make kids happy. We may not have had the homemade sugar cookies, or big dinner that we planned. But they didn't even notice.  I need to remember that in the future when I try to over plan and do things extravagantly.  Sometimes the simplest things are "best" =)