It's Here!

Happy Christmas Eve to anyone who happens to stumble across my little blog today. I'm still a little in denial that it's here, but I guess I'm ready for it. I made pumpkin bread last night to bring to work today for our Christmas lunch and a pecan pie to take with us tonight. We will be spending the evening with our good friends and having homemade pierogies. It's their family tradition that we were invited to 4 years ago, and now we wouldn't miss it. My favorite pierogies are stuffed with potato and sauercraut and then toppped with caramelized onions. They are so yummy! We do a gift exchange with them, then we'll head home. We always put out milk and cookies for Santa and then the kids will probably head to bed. I've got a couple more gifts left to wrap for the kids and then after they are sleeping soundly, Santa can do his magic. I never know what time the kids will get up. They've never tried to get us up super early, but last night my boy asked what time he could wake us up. He thought 6 sounded like a good time. I'm not so sure. I told him that if he got up really early, he could bring his pillow and blanket in our room and camp out on the floor for a while. I'd like them to wait until we are all up to go downstairs, as I *think* Santa is going to bring them something really great this year. Not sure if they'll be able to resist the temptation though.
I hope I get to leave work early today. The last couple of years I've been able to leave around 3ish, and while I'd be grateful for that, I'd really like to leave earlier if possible. I forgot to plug my camera battery in to charge this morning, so I hope it has enough to get us through tonight.
My sister and her family are driving from Missouri today and should be here this afternoon sometime. They are staying with my parents tonight and then will head over tomorrow with them for gift exchange and dinner. Then they will stay at our house until they leave on Sunday. I can't wait to love on my niece. She's 21 months old and when I saw her in CA this summer, she was having quite a bit of stranger anxiety, so I didn't get to enjoy her as much as I wanted. My sister assures me she's grown out of it now, so I'm hopeful. I'm going to love on my nephew too, but he's 13 and sometimes harder to hold on to!
Writing in this blog has been interesting and I'm finally becoming more comfortable with it and with reading/commenting on so many of yours. Thank you for reading mine and especially for the comments. I hope you all have a very Merry Christmas/ Happy Hanukkah/ Happy Kwanzaa, etc. I look forward to reading about all of your holiday celebrations and especially look forward to hearing about the arrival of this Wee One. I will pop in and update my blog when I can.
I hope you are all surrounded with love during this time of year.