Hey, Christmas happened this year! With the usual trimmings and trappings and fanfare. :) We had Rosy and Barney with us, and Grandpa Don and Pat. We missed Pop Cube and Grandma though. The kids are growing up and (slightly) less exciting at Christmas (shh! don’t tell them I said so), but we had a house full of puppies to keep us all on our toes.

The fun started Christmas Eve when everyone arrived. Well, we had fun cleaning on Christmas Eve EVE (and teasing Eve, Eve, Eve), but the party started the next day with company and pizza at our house. Fortunately the pizza place is open on Christmas Eve. Fortunately for us anyway, maybe not for the pizza place employees.

After a nice dinner and family catch up time, the kids went to bed and Santa came!

I always love our living room on Christmas Eve. <3

Santa leaves two presents in for each kid in their bedrooms (in the hopes that mommy can get a little extra sleep). This year the presents were books and Legos and the kids gloriously stayed upstairs until 7am! Then they had to wake Aunt Rosy, wait for us adults to get some caffeine, then pose for pictures before finally, FINALLY, busting into the living room to examine the goods!

I love watching them look from afar. :)

A Beanie Boo!! What more could you ask for than a weird, big-eyed stuffy in your stocking!! She has dozens already, but she still loved this one too.

Even Arlo got a stocking full of treats, and even Arlo ended up with a belly ache from eating too many treats on Christmas morning!

Then it was time for breakfast (who am I kidding, more candy coming right up!) and waiting patiently (ha!) for the rest of the family to get done with church and come over. We do presents in stages around here. Bedroom presents first thing in the morning, stockings when the parents are awake, then the rest of the presents with the whole family. Good thing those early presents are strategically chosen. :)

Bodhi is getting so big! And so very tolerant. Arlo would never calmly allow this to happen to him. :)

For all the present unwrapping pictures (and all the pictures from Christmas), check out the Google album.

The kids got Ozobots for Christmas and had fun drawing paths for them to follow.

Lovely ladies.

Christmas dinner consisted of ham (honey glazed or something with pineapple and stuff, someone else could give you a much better title than I), and veggie lasagna, and salad. It was all delicious, of course. Then we washed it down with wine and cookies!

The obligatory selfie-stick pic. The crowd was small this year.

The next day we spent exploring our presents, reading lots of books, painting, and shopping with holiday gift cards. :)

Eve got face paints, which she promptly turned in to whole body paints!

Fruit Ninja on the XBox Kinect with Uncle Barney. Life is good.

Something went wrong that evening and several of us ended up throwing up all night. Not really the best way to spend a night (or the following day!), but at least it was over vacation. Poor Rosy had to drive home with a sick belly. :( Fortunately it didn’t last long and by the following day we were all feeling better again.

We are home today, totally snowed in (or so the weather forecast tells me, I don’t know, it’s dark outside), eating dinner on the couch, watching a Marx Brothers movie, and enjoying our vacation to the fullest.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

For all of my Christmas photos, head on over to the Google album.

This year we managed to double our holiday party invitations (received!), going from two to four! For the past many years we’ve needed a babysitter just twice a year, both times in December. Once for Alan’s company party and once for Elizabeth’s Christmas party. It’s hard to keep babysitters when you only use them twice a year! :)

This year we also got invited to my school staff party and the town staff party! So fun! :) Unfortunately, due to weather and illness, we only made it to two parties. Sigh.

The school party was last weekend when Alan was still wiped out from pneumonia and I was resting my voice after surgery. I was disappointed to miss the first one, but it had to be done. Last night we went to Alan’s company party. It was nice enough. It’s a cocktail party, which isn’t my favorite style, but everyone is nice and we had fun. Tonight was Elizabeth’s party, but she cancelled it because the roads were AWFUL! I took the kids to a birthday party at 1pm and the roads were barely plowed with snowbanks everywhere! We made it to the party, but it took awhile! I was sad that she canceled her party this evening, but also glad that she didn’t leave it up to the guests to decide whether or not to risk her long, hilly dirt road. So I cancelled the babysitter and told Alan when he came home from karate. He immediately said, “Get the babysitter back! I have a backup party!” Haha.. Ok! I had forgotten that the town staff party was that day and Select Board members were invited. The party was right in town and easy enough to get to on the bad roads (and the snow had stopped by then, which helped!) so we went to the backup party and it was TONS of fun! It was great to finally put faces to all the names he talks about from meetings and names I see in the paper. They had an excellent buffet, hosted the party in a renovated space down town, and cleared the tables at the end for dancing!! I haven’t been to a party with dancing in ages! We’re all a bunch of old folks so the party ended at nine, but it was a great time and I’m so glad that Alan had a backup party ready to go. :)

Happy Holidays!