Christmas 2010: Part 1

We had a great Christmas at home this year.

We woke up first thing in the morning to find that Santa had come.  The cookies we left by the fireplace were gone and the gifts were under the tree. 

We dug in.

By the way, does anyone know how to Photoshop out snot? 

I got Brooke a doll even though she's never been interested in them. I thought maybe if she had a more realistic-looking doll she'd play with it.  It's so sweet when little girls play with dolls.

At first it looked promising.  Brooke named the doll Sassy.  She held her and patted her. It was sweet. 

Then she dropped her. And there she stayed.  The end. 

The Santa aftermath.  And sweet hair, Mom.

When the chaos of gift-opening settled down, we read the story of Jesus's birth, a story the kids have heard many times over the past few weeks.  Brooke likes to pretend she's baby Jesus. Maybe a slightly inflated sense of self?

We spent the afternoon playing with the new toys.  Tea, anyone?

We watched the snow.  The beautiful, Christmas-card snow.

We (briefly) played in it.

I made a small Christmas dinner for us.  I decided to tackle a new kind of stuffing this year.  Herbs, cranberries, apples, sausage, and bread (obviously).  It was really, really good, thankyouverymuch. :-)



Unfortunately, the meal went downhill from there.  What's wrong with the picture below?

The child on the left is crying even though she's about to be served a much-better-than-usual meal.  Child on the right (not pictured) is screaming, too. 

Seriously, I have no idea what was wrong with either one of them.  It was weird.

So Scot and I exercised some outstanding parenting: we got frustrated, parked the kids in front of the TV and ate a nice Christmas meal together, just the two of us. And as much as I had wanted a family meal, it was really nice to have dinner alone. I didn't even have to cut Scot's food or wipe his hands off after dinner.  

Christmas of 2010 was a very merry one.