*: The 12 Dramas of Christmas

We had quite the lead up to Christmas. One nice activity was Ainsleigh having her good buddy Emma over to make gingerbread houses. And by gingerbread, I mean graham cracker. And by Emma & Ainsleigh making their houses, I mean Kristin and I made them while the girls ate up the candy. Here they were last year:

Unfortunately, shortly after this, things took turn for the worse. First of all, everyone got sick. Well, Ainsleigh didn't. Ripken had a pretty bad cold for about a week, and finally Tracy got sick to the point of going to get tested for Strep (which is worth noting because Tracy never goes to the doctor). Then on Saturday afternoon Rippy started pulling on his ears, but at that point we had to wait until Monday morning to take him to the doctor. Sure enough, he had a double ear infection. That same day Tracy also woke up with pink eye in both eyes, so we were quite the doubly infected pair. The doctor thought Ripken making it 8 months sans infection was good, but since Ainsleigh still has never had an ear infection, I was not impressed. Somewhere in there Austin got sick, too, so that left Ainsleigh going fill tilt and the rest of us dragging.

That night we (finally) converted Ainsleigh's crib to a toddler bed. While Austin was working on the bed, Ainsleigh and I were wrestling, and I accidentally body slammed her onto a screw-driver and so we had lots of blood from the back of her head. I thought we would be heading to the ER, but she recovered pretty quickly (certainly much quicker than I did). She had a big lump on the back of her head for a while, but it's already healed. I had nightmares for the next several nights about hurting her.

The next night, the fully decorated, recently watered Christmas tree toppled over and made a huge mess. Austin was gone, and in the midst of this, somehow Ainsleigh sliced her foot open on the laundry basket (how is that even possible!?) so there was more blood. I think that same night was when Ainsleigh (deliberately) didn't make it to the bathroom, another mess. And again I'll reiterate: all of this for Tracy to deal with without back-up. Sigh.

The next day was Christmas Eve Day. We went over to Farmor & Farfar's for Reed's famous Swedish rice pudding. Even Ripken got to have some. We were too sick to sing at Duke Chapel on Christmas Eve, so we all stayed home, but by Christmas Day we were improving.

This year Ainsleigh was very taken with Christmas lights. One night we drove around some of the neighborhoods to look at the lights. Here were the three most memorable holiday light displays:

OK, getting started. Notice the palm tree (bottom right).

This one was by far the tackiest. There was every kind of inflatable imaginable, including a huge countdown-to-Christmas timer. You will need to click to enlarge this and the next one to fully appreciate them, although they were even more...amazing?...in person.

Most likely to be seen from outer space. This guy has hooks all over his house to string the lights around. The roof says "Merry Christmas", and I'm guessing the big "W" on the garage is for George, but perhaps it's for Roy.

We also enjoyed my Aunt Lorrie's famous sugar cookies. Don't tell, but Ripken had one, too. Chalk it up to things you do with baby #2 that you would never dream of with baby #1!