Our Christmas in a Nutshell

We had a wonderful Christmas....

here are  few highlights...

One day I noticed an addition to the nativity scene. A dragon toy from McD's from that How to Train Your Dragon Movie. I'm not sure if he's trying to eat baby Jesus or just get a closer look...

Christmas Eve the girls and I traditionally make a birthday cake for baby Jesus.

They got to frost it.

And decorate it with sprinkles.

and of course, lick the frosting knives when done.

And fingers.

Erik's folks were here and his dad is quite the character.

Erik on Christmas Eve during present time. (We open all of them then, except the Santa ones)

Kera modeling a new hat she got from my mom.

Kera opening the camelbak that she's wanted since summer. She was sooo happy about this one.

I love the expression on Lindsay's face in this one, she's stoked to get that stereo!

I snapped a series of action shots with this present. The girls couldn't get it open (oops!) and it was hilarious, here Lindsay is trying the old standby teeth...

But then Kera finds the scissors and takes matters into her own hands.

Inside the box was this sweater that Kera has been wanting all school year. She was so surprised that I'd tricked her into waiting for Christmas.

Modeling new sweater, hat and dangly earrings that I made her.

Christmas Day breakfast....(with scrambled eggs that didn't make the photo shoot)

For Christmas Dinner, Karen and I pulled out all the stops. Remember back when I blogged about the Gluten-Free Girl cookbook? Well, Karen ended up buying the book too and so we talked about how fun it would be to try a few recipes for Christmas dinner. So we did. The menu consisted of: Pan-seared beef tenderloin with port sauce and balsamic onions, potato puree and for dessert, cinnamon creme brulee. Our friend, Conrad, who joined us for dinner brought a green salad which totally balanced out the meal. It was delicious. And so filling...here we are laying around before dessert..

and the girls (ours and Conrad's) played around, being goofy.

Erik, doing his thing with the blowtorch on the creme brulee.

Yum!!

So, we had a great Christmas. Now we are thoroughly enjoying the girls' break from school. I'm in my lounge clothes (the same ones) for a 2nd day in a row, but don't be grossed out, I did workout and shower. We've played our new game, Life, several times and the girls are totally enjoying their new webkinz, books and music. I've read a couple books on my kindle and love it. We've eaten a lot of our Christmas candy  and most of our leftovers. (The leftover balsamic onions and port sauce combined with some beef broth, a chunk of bread and some Gruyere cheese made killer french onion soup.)

I was sick of the mess and so yesterday I packed away all the Christmas decorations and cleaned. It seems so refreshingly clean and empty now, which is great. I get tired of all the extra "clutter" that the Christmas decorations bring. Now its just a matter of doing the rest of my cleaning, which will probably get done today. I have some scrapbooking (like almost all of 2009) that I would love to get done before this year is out and then there is all the Mexico prep to start on. So I definitely still have plenty to do! Speaking of which, I probably should get to it!

Hope you had a wonderful Christmas too and are enjoying whatever kind of break you get!