Christmas Day

We had a truly blessed Christmas day.  While our girls never sleep quite as long as hope they will, they slept late enough that we could have a reasonable start to the morning.  (Reasonable meaning that we were awake and had even been able to make a pot of coffee, turn on all the Christmas lights, unload the dishwasher, and put the breakfast casserole in the oven before we brought the girls downstairs.)

A few highlights from our morning:

Since we don't have a fireplace, our stockings were placed, rather than hung on Christmas Eve.  We'd laid them on the loveseat in the living room, so they were the first things the girls saw as they came down the stairs.  The long, knitted stockings posed a challenge for the girls -- they could hardly reach to the bottom to fish out their goodies.  It wasn't as much of a problem for Madeline since she wasn't as interested in taking things out of the stocking as she was interested in putting the stocking on her little foot!

The kitchen, despite its candlelight assembly, was a big hit.  The girls spent a lot of the morning (and a good portion of every day since then) cutting wooden food and preparing imaginary culinary delights.

The girls found plenty of other things to entertain them, too.  They were pleased as punch with the books and puzzles they were given.  Madeline was particularly delighted by a spinny toy that had been in her stocking. . .  once she discovered that the stocking wasn't just for wearing.

We opened presents, we ate a delicious breakfast, we opened more presents.  Madeline napped, and Mama, Daddy and Kathleen played Go Fish.  (Kathleen had gotten the cards in her stocking and caught on like a pro.)  Later in the afternoon we drove up to Nan and Grandpa's house for Christmas dinner.  Nan and Grandpa always have English-style crackers at their Christmas dinner.  The crackers open with a bang, giving each person a set of jokes, a paper hat, and a little toy.   Kathleen thinks this a great tradition!

After dinner we continued celebrating with even more gifts from aunts and uncles and Nan and Grandpa.  (It's a good thing we drive a minivan these days.  I'm not sure we'd have been able to haul everything home in our little Versa!)  We finished off the night with dessert.  Uncle Craig, who's from Australia, made us a traditional Austrailian Christmas treat: Pavlova, a light, meringue-y dessert topped with fresh fruit like mangoes and passion fruit.  Yum!

Filled with dessert and overwhelmed by everyone's generosity, we headed home to sleep in our own beds.  What a merry Christmas!