Santa (and a cop too)

Of course, if Santa had not procrastinated and had wrapped presents earlier this week, (s)he wouldn't be so tired.

But no, instead, all of the wrapping waited. And since our Christmas celebration is a day early, that just made getting everything ready a little bit more of a challenge.

The Dude came over this afternoon and hung out with us...and after we finally got the last kid in bed, we started wrapping. We finally got everything done around 1:00am, with the exception of one last gift that needed to be picked up and brought over here - so The Dude is working on that mission right now and should be back shortly.

I didn't go all out with gifts this year. They got things that they needed plus a few extras. We're having dinner here with The Dude and his mother, and we're going to just hang out and relax and watch movies and spend time together as a family. Alex will be leaving sometime in the evening to go to his father's house, and I'll probably take the older 3 to their father's house after the late church service. They're going to get a ton of presents elsewhere, and they just don't *need* a lot of toys and games and junk.

On a humorous note, The Dude was getting ready to head back over to his house to pick up the one last big gift and when he walked outside, a cop car had pulled up on the street behind his van and was just sitting there - no lights or anything. He walked over to start his van, and the officer got out of his car - turns out that he had watched some drunks pull into a nearby eating establishment and he was watching and waiting for them to leave. Sure enough, a few minutes later, he went tearing out of the neighborhood like a shot! Given the former uh, activities that happened in this house before we moved in, seeing cops out front tends to make me a little nervous.

And now, Santa has to go make the cinnamon rolls for breakfast. Yay Santa.