These Are The Days: Furness family Christmas

"You there, boy! What day is it?"
"Why, it's Martin Luther King Day, Sir!"

"Then I haven't missed it! The spirits have done it all in one night!"

This year we celebrated the Furness family Christmas a bit later than usual on MLK Day weekend.We came down early on Saturday to spend some time with Grandma and Papa. We even made the day extra special by going to see Eva's first movie in the movie theatre: Beauty and the Beast in 3D. Beast has been Eva's number one movie since around Thanksgiving time, so we thought it would be a good one to go see for the first time. She didn't want to wear the glasses, which we thought would probably happen, but I think she was more well-behaved than most of the other kids there. So all in all, I was proud of her first theatre experience. She finally put the glasses on for the last 90 seconds of the movie, purely to drive me crazy I think. Then we met up with the rest of the family for pizza before heading back to Grandma's house to spend the night.

As is usually the case anytime we spend the night somewhere, Eva didn't sleep very well. She wasn't interested in going to be until wayyyy past her bedtime and then was up around 5-5:30. The ever-insomniac Grandma heard her stirring around and came in to get her so Daddy and I could keep sleeping. But the loss of a few hours of sleep made Eva a little less than her usual bubbly self by the time we got to Great-Grandma Furness's house. She did enjoy a round of beating Cody with foam swords with her cousins, however, and trying to coax Yoda out of her kennel.

We had some pool time reserved at the fitness center, so we suited up and headed out. Unfortunately at this point in the day Evalee was already short on about 3-4 hours of sleep AND we were arriving right around naptime. Those two things in combination meant that Evalee was NOT going to play and have fun with her cousins in the pool. Everyone tried to convince her to get in, and Alex was even almost successful, but in the end the tired and grumpy took over. So, we just snuggled and watched everyone else have some fun. Despite her extreme tiredness, Eva refused to miss out on any of the action and didn't fall asleep until we got in the car to head back to Grandma Furness's. After she was asleep, an airplane wouldn't have woken her out of that nap. We spent the afternoon and evening eating snacks, opening presents, and catching up. Eva got an Aqua Doodle, a Color Wonder book, a singing kitchen toy, a Sing-a-ma-jig (which, let's be honest, Travis has enjoyed as much if not more than she has), and a Princess back pack. She has been thoroughly enjoying all her gifts.

Since all of three of us weren't operating on the best of sleeps and we knew it'd be another rough night if we stayed in Williamsville, we decided to drive all the way back so we could all sleep in our own beds. We were very glad we made that decision, since Eva let us sleep in until almost 8 the next day!

We were really happy we got to see all our cousins we don't get to see very often and share some laughs.