To say that I have spent much of this Christmas break relaxing feels like an understatement. As evidenced by the fact that I was out of my pajamas for almost six hours yesterday and it felt like an eternity. All I wanted was to be reunited with my blardigan and fair isle leggings from Gap.
And I wasn’t going to write anything but then I realized it’s about to be the New Year and it seems like maybe I should recap Christmas 2014 before the calendar turns to 2015 because then it will officially fall in the category of who even cares anymore. But since this has been a full day that has involved me being out of my pajamas for six hours and watching the Aggies beat West Virginia in our bowl game and helping Gulley put together a 1,000 piece puzzle that Santa brought her boys, this is going to seem mainly like when your aunt used to bring out her Kodak slide projector at Christmas to show you the photos from their most recent bus trip to see the fall color in New England.
Before Christmas we had one of Caroline’s friends over and the girls made a Gingerbread Village. After we opened the box I discovered that “Village” was a stretch for what was essentially more like a shanty town. You may find it hard to see the detail in this photo but Caroline’s part of the Gingerbread shanty town included a gummy bear that she decided to hang from a noose. I have no explanation for this.
However, I will tell you that Mabel helped herself to the Gingerbread shanty town on Christmas Eve and ate almost half of it, including the already dead Gummy bear.
On the eve of Christmas Eve, Caroline and I did our usual big cinnamon roll bake. I forget every year that they are absolutely worth every bit of trouble because they are like heaven in a tin pie plate.
That photo represents about 1/3 of the actual pans of cinnamon rolls we had covering every inch of my kitchen. I will not disclose how many pans I ate versus how many pans I gave away to friends and family.
Christmas Eve we went to Mimi and Bops’s house for tamales and to open presents with my sister and her family.
Caroline got an air hockey table from Mimi and Bops and she and her cousins put it to good use for the rest of the evening.
Then it was time to head home and get ready for Santa Claus. But first we took a few pictures in front of the Christmas tree because I meant to take them before we left earlier and then we ran out of time and I almost forgot the pecan pie and, bottom line, Christmas time when you’re the mom involves a lot of moving parts.
Christmas morning, P woke up before everyone else because that is what he does and he remembered to take a picture of the calm before the storm.
And then Caroline woke up to see that Santa had indeed shown up and came bearing large claw foot slippers.
Along with a few other things.
Piper was happy to receive a festive Christmas scarf.
She feels that she’s never looked better.
Meanwhile, Mabel believes that Christmas themed scarfs are fine for some dogs who like that sort of thing, but she is more of a fan of a new Christmas teddy bear.
In fact, if you try to take it away from her, she’ll growl at you. Which is reminiscent of her reaction when I took away the remainder of the Gingerbread house she was enjoying.
All in all, it was a great Christmas around here. Lots of fun and laughter and making great memories and eating too many sugar cookies. And since then we have watched movies and read books and I’ve watched so many episodes of The Good Wife that I believe I’ve actually earned an honorary law degree and am available to defend any of you in court if the occasion presents itself.
I had a burst of energy and even took down the Christmas tree and all the other decorations and packed up two bags of stuff to drop off at Goodwill because there is nothing like the after Christmas clean up that makes you want to get rid of some clutter.
As for my people, there’s been a lot of this happening ever since.
Personally, I’ll stick with my pajamas and a nice fire in the fireplace.
Hope y’all had a great Christmas.