Leading Up To Christmas

We were blessed to have Amanda, Josh and our beautiful grandson, Casen home for Christmas. I was thrilled to get to see Casen's first Christmas - what a bonus! I have really missed living closer to them, we missed so many firsts this year. If I had to have one first though it would have to be First Christmas. Christmas is my favorite time of year and in my family we learned early on to do it up right!
It was great getting to decorate for family coming, deciding what to put out of our Christmas things, what not to put too low (little hands and paws - two of the granddogs came too), unwrapping the "Cookies and Milk for Santa" set I bought years ago in anticipation of this event and trying to figure out what to put at Casen's level that he might enjoy. It was FUN for Brian and I both.
The tree ornaments only went 2/3 of the way down the tree, but lights all around (more is always better when it comes to Christmas tree lights). Big Bear ended up in his usual corner minus all his little friends (a few came to a heinous end the last doggie visit! - Another story for another time, maybe!) and the Hallmark snowmen poised to be on the floor for Casen in a sweep of a hand! Despite Brian's fibro the house was perfectly trimmed with strings and strings of Christmas lights (remember more is always better!) and decorations hung from between each window (except the night the wind storm took a couple of them down).
Now all we had to do was wait . . .
and waiting was difficult, the kids drove straight through, leaving OKC mid afternoon. We kept getting updates - text messages, cute pictures and phone calls - until the middle of the night. They didn't want to wake us up, but Hey, We Are Parents Here! - we have internal clocks that apparently activate as needed - Brian made a couple of calls for us that night to reassure us that they were safe and still driving.
Early Sunday morning they pulled into the drive - 2 happy dogs, 1 wide awake Grandson and 2 weary, sleep deprived parents! Lots of hugging and kissing, petting of doggies, talking, and loving ensued. After an hour or so of catching up, Parents hit the bed and Immie and Bunny got to take Grandson to church!