I found the Simple Life Ain't So Simple

All the cousins on that side of the family.

This will be another holiday mostly photo post. So, Christmas Eve, yeah. It was very hectic. I knew it would be, so I was trying to just go with it. Everyone was so squirrelly at work, I didn't know if we'd make it out alive. My co-worker, John was making me so crazy I had to remind him several times to take his meds. When he said he already had, I told him to take mine too.

I finally made it out of work and on to Ottumwa. I took a different route since the four lane was finally completed, and the roads were pretty clear.

I got to the shenanigans and everyone had already eaten, so I got my plate and watched the savage present opening festivities. As you can see, the dress-up clothes were a hit with the younger kids. I love it when they mixed and matched the Cinderella dress with the Storm Trooper helmet.

As you can imagine, none of us got tired of the Storm Trooper helmet and neither would you have. I'm sure of it.

I don't know if it was because they were full of the Christmas spirit, or if they were just nicer because they hadn't seen me for a day, but my girls actually posed for a photo...And nobody had bunny ears or a tongue sticking out. It was a Christmas miracle!

After a couple of hours, we all started getting sleepy and I still had to drive back, so we took our leave.

The obligatory holiday photo of my aunt's poor, overwhelmed pooch.

We did have a little Christmas drama on the way home. My gas light came on at one point. None of the gas stations were open, and when I went to get my credit card out, I realized I had left my purse at home. Crap! That also meant that I didn't have my driver's license or AAA card on me either. Double crap! We were in Lone Tree at this point which is only about 15 minutes from Iowa City, but my gas light had already gone off and I had no idea how far I had before we were going to be stuck.

I called my sister in order to have an adult to spaz to and she was awesomely reassuring. She checked her computer to see how many miles away we were from home and thought we could make it. We were white knuckling it the whole way back, but the first gas station we found in Iowa City was open and happy to exchange cash for fuel. It was another Christmas miracle!

As we drove up to our house, we saw a cop car in the driveway. I'd have been a little more worried, if the same thing hadn't happened a few days before. There must be some kind of trouble going on in the duplex next to ours, because the cops keep going over there for some reason. Anyway, I was too tired to worry about it.

Christmas was as mellow as Christmas Eve was not, but I'll get into that tomorrow. I hope your Christmas was everything you wanted.