Christmas 2010

Surely I am the last blogger in all of blogdom to get her Christmas pictures posted.  Ack!  I was not trying to set any records for time between posts, but a complicated case of strep throat hit me hard and I’ve been in recovery.  It feels good to be sitting at the computer again writing about happy things as opposed to trying to figure out what I did to deserve yet another round of strep and, in my lowest moments, longing for death.

So here goes. . .

Christmas Eve was spent decorating cookies, a fun tradition in this household:

The next morning everyone was up bright and early ready to attack the stack of gifts under the tree. Here’s the girls still looking a little sleepy-headed, ready to dig into their mittens (we hang mittens on the mantle in place of stockings):

After opening the mittens we settled in for breakfast. The girls helped make coffee while I finished a few other things:

I could drool right now just thinking about our annual Christmas morning monkey bread. It doesn’t get better than this:

Heaven on a plate:

After omelets and grapefruit and ungodly amounts of monkey bread, we were ready for the Christmas Story. We decided to act it out this year. Here’s the cast of characters:

This picture makes me laugh every single time I look at it!

We switched characters around and B and L became wisemen, bringing gifts of red Christmas ornaments and bowing to baby Jesus.

I feel a need to explain baby Jesus. We told Ellie to go get her new baby doll to be Jesus, but she really wanted to use a stuffed animal instead (it fit better under her shirt), so this little hamster got the lead role:

One of the most fun things for me this year was that we had the girls buy gifts for each other. They drew names, we gave them a budget, and we all went shopping together. Watching them shop so carefully for each other was really fun. Lydia shopped for Ellie and after much consideration decided on a giant cardboard playhouse. The box was huge and Ellie about drove me crazy with her constant curiosity about that big box. On Christmas morning we all agreed that she could open the first gift. Here’s Lydia giving it to her (Lydia looks drugged in this picture, poor kid, but I promise she’s not!):

Halfway done unwrapping:

A little assembly was required:

And for the rest of the day Ellie could be found right here:

I don’t have pictures of the rest of the gift exchange between the girls, but just for the record Bryn gave Lydia 2 Webkinz and Ellie gave Bryn 1 Webkinz and this whole household was a very happy place.

Lydia’s main gift from us was a writing center which she was thrilled about:

And Bryn’s main gift was a fashion studio:

The rest of the day was spent playing with the new stuff and listening to Christmas music. Conrad and I spent the day putting together a puzzle (puzzles are great marriage therapy, by the way! We just chatted away all day long about everything under the sun while we worked on that puzzle).

Here’s Lydia hard at work on writing a story:

And here’s Bryn and me (with a nasty case of bed-head) working on designing and sewing her first dress. I hate sewing more than most things in life, but Bryn’s enthusiasm made it bearable:

And that was Christmas in this household! Thanks for reading!