Four

Four seems to be the magic number today. I just schedule our 4th Christmas celebration. First will be on this Thursday while my sister is in town from Idaho. 2nd will be on Christmas day with my parents. 3rd will be with my brother and his wife when they come in town a few days later. 4th will be with Jay's mom, sister, aunt, his grandparents, and our nieces. I have gotten the feeling from my mom that she would rather combine the 2nd and 3rd one. That won't work though as Nick and Kelly won't get into town until several days after Christmas and two of my kids know that Christmas happens on Dec. 25th.
In past years, my siblings haven't been here on the actual Christmas and we did a "fake" Christmas usually the weekend before Christmas. My mom likes to act the part of Santa so she started telling the kids that the elves were leaving gifts since I told them that Santa only comes on the 25th. Jay, the boys and I would then have Christmas at our house on Christmas and Santa would come.
Joe and Tom have gotten some strange ideas about Christmas decorations. We aren't decorating this year for a lot of different reasons. The main one is that we have planned for months and months to do Christmas at my mom's house. The boys were very worried that Santa won't come to an undecorated house. I finally got it through their heads that it's okay because we aren't going to be here. If we are out in the evening, we drive through some neighborhoods looking at Christmas displays. They will exclaim from the backseat "wow! Nothing will stop Christmas from coming to that house!" They also seem to think that Santa will stop at the most decorated house first.

Jay should be home in four days. I really miss spending time with him. I have been emailing him lots of questions about moving and got some vague news Sunday night. He said that he was told that he had to be back there in January. (Well, that's what we planned, right?) Of course, NGC hasn't signed the long term contract, so the boys and I can't move until it is signed. Hopefully it will be signed soon. Of course, I emailed and asked if Jay had to go if it wasn't signed but I haven't heard back from him yet. I really really don't want him to go without us again.