"The Holidays"–2012–Part II

Christmas!

This year for Christmas, we decided to do something a little different, and NOT live out of suitcases and spend a Christmas in our own house.  Not the most popular move with my mom, since we wouldn't be driving down state to see them, but we went down for a visit in early December, and would be seeing them the next weekend at a wedding, so I hope she understood.

We followed as closely as we could to Cora's family traditions, which are a bit different than ours.  We are a "Christmas Eve" family.  That's when the big party was, and the exchange of gifts.  Christmas day was smaller, and then we would have a late lunch at my sisters, and maybe put together a jigsaw puzzle.

Cora's family is Christmas Day.  On Christmas Eve, cookies were baked for Santa, and stockings were stuffed in preparation for the next day.

Cora & I decorated some cookies.	The Daughter did her Nightmare cookies, too.
But then Santa came in and ate one of the cookies…	All of the cookies.

Christmas morning started slowly. We had a breakfast of eggs, bacon, fruit, and cinnamon roles.  So yummy.  So full of bacon.

And then we broke into the stockings…

That's mine on the left, the Daughter has the middle two, and Cora's is on the right.

The Daughter had two stockings, this one, topped by Shock from The Nightmare Before Christmas. The other stocking had Barrel. She already had Lock, so now she has the full set. And a huge pile of chocolate.

The wife got a Kermit the Frog PEZ dispenser (and she looks marvelous, doesn't she?), and huge pile of chocolate…

Oddly, this is the present I was most excited for Santa to leave her. It's a shutter remote for her camera, so she can be in the pictures without having to race the self-timer.

And always an orange in the toe. But if you know my wife, it had better be one of Terry's dark chocolate oranges.

Among the treasures that I got in my stocking was the Chitty Chitty Bang Bang DVD.  I love that old movie.  And we would watch it later in the day.  Oh, the man that could smell children.

And after the stockings were opened, we all posed for a group portrait.  If you look REAL close, Cora has the remote control shutter control in her right hand.

After a little Chitty Chitty, we headed over to our neighborhood park to enjoy the surprise "White Christmas" that we got thanks to a little lake effect snow.  And we decided to share our bounty with some of the locals.

And if you are wondering if squirrels like graham crackers, I can tell you that this little dude sure did.

And then there were these two flying squirrels…

We got home from the park, and snacked a little while we started making dinner, and aiming for about 3:00.

The menu included:

• Turkey breast.
• Garlic mashed red potatoes.
• Gravy.
• Stuffing.
• Green beans with onion strings
• Orange / Cranberry muffins
• Chocolate pie

The turkey was a Jennie-O that comes in a bag that you have to simply cook for 3 hours.  The potatoes and stuffing were instant.  The gravy came with the turkey, the muffins and pie from mixes and the green beans (French cut) from a can.

We even ate it off my grandmother's old dishes.

And it was all freakin' awesome.

About the only downside was when I reached into the utensil drawer for a serving spoon, but instead ran my middle finger across the blade of the mandolin that was hiding in there.

And the BLOOD gushed.

And gushed.

And didn't stop gushing.

I kept my cool and kept the blood out of the food.  It took way more than a simple Band-Aid, but thanks to a lot of white tape, I was back in the game.  And mostly hid my hand for the rest of the pictures.  And I'm not sure which I'm more proud of:  that I didn't utter a single swear word, or that my wife didn't freak out, either. 

One of the first things I opened were DVDs of the new Spider-Man and The Iron Giant.  The crazy psycho-eyes are for the Iron Giant.  

And Cora got this swanky backpack that came from The Candy Bar.  Thanks Candy, she absolutely loved it.

And the Daughter got some more Nightmare wear.

And an armature for making more animation models.

And more nightmare stuff for The Daughter…

And professor Remus Lupin's wand to add to the wife's collection…

And then I got my favorite gift of the day.  A kiss from my wife.

We kissed, and the punk Daughter got ready to take our picture, but then had us hold the pose for like, 15 seconds before she actually took the picture, so at this point, we are both trying not to laugh.

I hope you all had a great Christmas, as well.