The Perfect Day

Merry Christmas to all! Christmas at the Perrow household was quite stress-free this year. We always travel to the grandparents' places around Christmas, but we always wake up Christmas morning in our own house. In previous years, we would wake up Christmas morning, open our presents as fast as possible, then pack the kids in the van with one or two of their new toys and head 3-4 hours north to either my parents' place or Gail's dad's place, to be there in time for Christmas dinner. Then we'd do Christmas all over again there, and a day or two later leave that set of grandparents and drive the hour to the other set. A day or two after yet another Christmas, we'd come home to the huge mess that we left.

We only made one change to that schedule this year, but it made a huge difference. We decided not to go north for Christmas dinner, but leave later in the day. As a result, we took our time opening presents, and if the kids wanted to play with something for 10 minutes before opening the next one, no problem. This small change completely killed any time pressure that we felt, and made Christmas Day very enjoyable. However, that's not the perfect day I referred to in the title of this entry. Boxing Day we spent at my in-laws place, and the 27th at my parents' place, and both days were very relaxing and enjoyable, but neither of them was the perfect day either. The perfect day was yesterday, the 28th.

The boys slept until about 7:30, and I got up with them while Gail slept in. Ryan had already made himself a waffle, and I got Nicky some breakfast as well. They watched some TV while I got their clothes and swimming stuff ready, then I drove them over to the YMCA for a "Kitchen Chemistry" class followed by a swim. While they were there, Gail and I cleaned up the family room — moved new toys to the play room or the boys' rooms, collected all the wrapping paper and boxes for recycling, stuff like that. Then I got the boys, and they played happily until lunch time. Lunch was something simple, and then we played a game or two as a family. I got the Scene It: Harry Potter DVD game, and we played that a couple of times. Ryan's seen the first movie once but not the rest, and Nicky hasn't seen any of them, but they enjoyed watching the clips and stuff. After that, Ryan wanted to do one of the puzzles he got for Christmas, and I helped him until he got bored and went to watch TV with Nicholas. Gail and I continued the puzzle until dinner time. We had dinner (leftover turkey, believe it or not), and then watched a TV show on UFOs, aliens and the whole Roswell thing which we all enjoyed (though Gail said the boys were a little freaked out later), and then I went to my friend Jeff's place for an evening of Texas Hold'em poker. The last time I played poker at Jeff's I didn't win a single hand all night. This time I did win some hands (some with fairly big pots) and I came 4th out of 9 people, so I was pretty happy with that.

It wasn't a great day because we got a lot done, or because of any one event, or because the meal was great, or anything like that. It just seemed like the perfect family day — the boys had fun doing things by themselves, with each other, and with us, and we had fun doing stuff with them as well. There was a minimum of fighting, squealing, and yelling (though with our boys, some of that is inevitable), nobody got sent to their room, nobody had to go to bed early because they weren't behaving, it was just a great day all around. The Perfect Day.