Christmas for the
Countless and Chaotic
A Somewhat Typical Christmas Day

    Here is a typical Christmas day from my journal.  This one that fell on Saturday because the real 25th was Sunday.  It was also a Christmas that I was down in pregnancy so not actively participating.
    Today was The Day for us.  It started last night with finding out that Neil, Chani and Chamrie had Choir practice this morning at 7:00 a.m..  Now, you can picture, the six younger children going to bed at 10 p.m. because company had kept them up and not sleeping!
    Chani and Neil playing put things under the tree.  Absolutely nothing goes under the tree until the night before.  Everything is kept in my bedroom until that moment when all children are finally asleep.  There are gifts everywhere in my room.  It is a recognizance mission just to find a place to plant my foot as I go from the door to the bed.
    Now it is morning and the big question the night before was for what time Chani should set the alarm clock.  Yes, she is the only one with an alarm clock.  Ours!  But then we are not silly enough to want to get up at 5:30 every morning.   Why does she get up at 5:30?  So that she can have some peace and study scriptures before her early morning seminary.  So the question of the night was should she set it for 6:00 a.m.?  "Yes!" yell the children.  "No!" yells Neil.  Ok, so set it for 6:30 a.m..
    That meant that the three singers quietly slipped out of the house leaving one almost angry mother and five sleeping children.  Really, don't you think you already know the songs you will be singing in front of everybody tomorrow?  "Now, dear, it will only be for one hour."
    Well, the children were asleep for a few moments after they left.  Then, I had five children wanting to go down to do the open thing.  Only, they have to stay on the stairs until mom and dad get up.  Only Dad is gone and Mom doesn't dare get out of bed.  So they wait.  I must say very patiently at first.
    Apparently his dad told Ben, "One hour, we'll be back at eight."  I decided to ignore the fact that it would be one-and-a-half hours from 6:30 to 8:00, because my pointing it out wouldn't have done any good anyway.
    When 8:30 a.m. came, the children were understandably rowdy.  How come children can only tell time on Christmas?  So I got out of bed and let them come down stairs to get into their stockings.  However, the presents were off limits until all the family was present.  Powerful phrase that: No presents till present.
    Well, that lasted for a few minutes.  Then we watched the clock until exactly 9:00 a.m. when the singers walked in the door.  Right away I hear Chamrie say, "I was right!  I was right!  They didn't wait!"
    Then Chani said, "Wait until we get to see our stockings."
    And then chaos erupted!  What fun!  It really was fun.  We have a pretty structured family but on Christmas the opening of the presents has no structure at all.  Paper flies everywhere and junk food ingested big time.  They loved it.
    Some people in our ward had anonymously sent several presents for the children.  That brought out another lesson about giving.
    Then a little later I called my mom.  I thought it was a fairly quiet time.  Only as I was talking to her, the traditional Logan Christmas Chase and Yell Game began.  Over the phone my mother's dog could hear the chaos and started barking at the phone.  We ended our conversation really quick!
    I made the mistake of starting to cook the bacon.  We cook bacon once a year.  Neil bought two pounds of it and I burned one pound before I handed it over to Chani because I was feeling faint.  We had breakfast, Neil's dad joined us and then still feeling faint, (a pregnancy thing with me, yes, like in the movies I really do pass out) Neil walked me upstairs and I slept.
    I awakened to Neil watching the only football game he gets each year.  The house still trashed.  The breakfast still on the table.  I had lunch and played genealogy with my computer.
    Now, Neil is getting the children to clean up and they are still wild and I am grateful it is today instead of tomorrow for all this activity.  They filled two giant trash bags with Christmas debris.  All my favorite shows on television are reruns so that activity holds no interest for me.  I still feel faint but the protein at lunch helped.  I really enjoyed the day.  It is so funny to watch seven children of all ages going crazy.