Christmas Day

Lots of fun. Toys and paper everywhere! We had a lot of fun with the dinosaur Henry got. It's amazingly lifelike when it's on Demo, and Wesley wasn't really sure what to think of it.




The highlight of my Christmas morning this year actually did not have to do with watching the kids. The best gift and the biggest, knockout surprise was for James--a MacBook Pro. It was largely for his research and some of his big upcoming trips, but also something he'll have an immense amount of fun with. It's a long story, but it had been our long-running joke that that's what he wanted for Christmas and five more years' worth of birthdays, but I had been 100% sure that we're not getting that. And then, just the Thursday before Christmas, Henry and I were going to finish up some shopping and I realized that there was a PeachMac store in town and that I could be sure of completely surprising James (which can be hard to do) and then a thought that I think was actually a prompting of the Spirit: that my hard-working husband, in the last few months, had already earned it and that it was something I should do and not withhold from him.

Again not to go into endless details but I had the biggest thrill of the Christmas spirit this year getting that computer and hiding it and getting it ready for Christmas morning. I made sure that the last present to be opened was a family gift of the game Clue, which Henry had opened on his own a few weeks ago. So James got the unexciting job of opening the rewrapped family present, but of course he didn't know there would be the note under the plastic directing him to look under the couch. It was a pretty exciting moment. We had long since lost the boys' attention to their new toys, but I had the best Christmas experience ever of seeing my husband open a gift the made him both go crazy with excitement and choke up and say over and over, "I can't believe it. I just can't believe it." I love him so much. He is deserving of everything good he gets in this life and of so much more as well. I can't believe I almost didn't get it for him. Life is short and it could all end tomorrow. This Christmas was worth every penny.

The Santa breakfast was a big hit. As you can see, the boys were very excited! Very, very fun for me.

So here is the rest of it--egg nog French toast, eggs, sausage, OJ, and hot cocoa (Henry is obsessed with "hot to-to" and especially if the water comes from a teapot). It was all super-yummy.

Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve was very nice this year. We were planning on spending it by ourselves and I'd made a huge dinner (a little too huge), but our good friends Dave and Shauna Vess (who had been by multiple times that day helping both James and I with secret gifts for each other) didn't have much planned for the evening because of all their relatives joining them the next day, so we had them over at the last minute and it was very fun. It was the first time I had ever picked out and cooked a real ham myself, and I have to say it was highly successful. In fact, we all agreed it was about the best ham we'd had, even better than Honeybaked Hams. I don't remember what it was except that it was some kind of shoulder/picnic type roast and it was the very cheapest kind in all the cases they had at Walmart. Talk about a lucky pick!




As you can see, our boys are quite reverent. Ely is one of Henry's best friends. And yes, that is a can of prune juice by their cups. Ely and Henry picked them out on their own from our food storage shelves. Ely did not enjoy his, but Henry, very surprisingly, did and drank the whole thing!

A little storytime following dinner. We read "Mr. Willoughby's Christmas Tree" most nights leading up to Christmas. It's a tradition from James's family, along with Richard Scarry's "The Animals' Merry Christmas" and we enjoy them throughly. Nothing warms my heart more than hearing James read, "The Little Bear and the Golden Sled" to Henry. (Wesley has no patience for that long of a story. Not yet, anyway.)

Here's our attempt at a Christmas Eve picture by the stockings. Wes would not hold still and smile, that little stinker. So we resorted to other measures.

OK, and here's my big fun thing this year. I saw an idea in a Southern Living cookbook for a Christmas morning brunch and here's my set-up of it the night before, only we called it "Santa's breakfast." In addition to having the table set up, there were lights strewn around the room and a curtain over the doorway so that the kids wouldn't notice it until after presents.

And voila! The powdered-donut Christmas tree. This was so fun to make. The balls are on toothpicks stuck into a styrofoam cone. The ornaments are cranberries. I had a lot of fun embellishing it. I've never made anything like this before. I'm not usually a "presentation" type of person, more like "feed-the-family-and-I'm-done," but this was a fun new project for me.

Getting ready for Christmas

We had such a nice time celebrating Christmas this year. It was nice to know we'd have the best of both worlds--staying at home for Christmas and traveling to see both of our families for New Year's. We got to do lots of fun things with the boys--making lots of holiday goodies and going to parties and shopping for each other. We also watched a slug of Christmas movies from the library and on YouTube, making Wesley even more of a movie junkie than he already is. (The first thing he does in the morning is point to the DVD drawer and then to the TV saying, "That, that, that." I promise we don't actually watch that much though!)

In honor of our huge, new living abode, we get a huge, new Christmas tree. We went to Jack's Creek Tree Farm and opted for a huge White Pine, which was on sale, as opposed to the Frazier Fir we usually get or the Leland Cypress that most everyone in the South seems to favor. As you can see, it barely fit in our car yet our awesome Corolla triumphs once again! (I also got a fully-assembled play kitchen in the trunk and brought it home the other day. Who needs a minivan?!)

Here's our tree all decorated. It turned out OK--it looks good in this picture--but it actually was an interesting tree. I don't think we'll get a white pine again. The branches are too flimsy to hold anything and then when you put ornaments on the branches farther in, they area totally obscured by the soft, grassy pine needles. Hmm. And, as you can see, it was a little too tall, with multiple branches touching the ceiling and the star situated just near the top as opposed to on the top. Plus, it was so fat and full that it took up like 1/4 of the room with its girth and had such a presence that sometimes it felt like an awkward 3rd person in the room that I was leaving out of the conversation. Still, the boys loved it and routinely tore down the bottom third of it. It looked beautiful on Christmas Eve and brought the Christmas spirit in our home.

And finally, what kids like Santa when they're this small? I must admit most Santas we see make me feel a big edgy too. The mall here actually has an excellent Santa with a real fluffy white beard and friendly smile and who the boys might have a better chance with, but he costs $25 for a photo, no personal cameras please. So here we are at a different community event and Henry was brave just long enough to tell Santa he'd sent him a letter and to please not forget his younger brother Wes who is too young too write.