Christmas Day

My favorite Christmas tree in a long, long time.

I even used tinsel. Tacky? Maybe, but it made me happy.

That's the main thing, right?

Our sweet Belle, minding the tree on Christmas Eve...something she has done for 14 years.

I have a feeling this could be the last.

What a gift she has been.

Pretty even without bows and ribbons.

Some year the paper has to stand on it's own.

Ya' know?

The Lilly Bean....waiting patiently for her gifts.

My dad passes out the gifts one by one so we all get to enjoy each other's gifts instead of ripping and tearing into things. I love taking our time to enjoy the whole thing. The wrapping, the thought behind the gift, the look on someone's face when they love their present and the look on the face of the person who

was so excited to give it.

All of it precious.

This year, no matter how much we tried to explain the gift tag and the whole to and from thing...Lilly was convinced every single gift was from my Dad which the kids call Dad Dad.

So, every time she opened something she would say..."Thank you Dad Dad." The first several times we corrected her...after that we just laughed! That's where 'remember the time' stories come from!

This coat deserves a post all it's own so I won't elaborate here....just suffice it to say it is adorable and she looks like a princess in it AND it was only $10. Seriously! One of those "you can't NOT buy it" situations.

More on the coat another day. I am thinking fresh snow, a walk with Lilly and my camera.

It's that cute.

Christmas Day was calm and peaceful which was just want I wanted and needed.

I wrapped presents on Christmas Eve, which I try never to do but this year it felt easy and I was still in bed by midnight. My father came in the morning and played Santa. We made a nice breakfast and then opened gifts. We went to my mother's for lunch and more gifts and then onto Scott's parents for dinner and presents. It seems like alot of running but so much less then we use to do. We were home by 8pm and I was asleep about 8:12. So much for watching Avatar...which I really wanted to watch as a family. Lately watching things as a family really means my kids watch it while I sleep. Am I getting old?

So it was a quiet Christmas and with all the changes in my life right now that was just perfect.

Maybe I will talk about changes in the next post.

For now I must focus on laundry and the dreaded job of returning ornaments to

their storage boxes for the next 11 months.

There are certain jobs I really can't stand and that is one of them.

 Another would be cleaning out the place you use to live. Yuck. 

But...it has to be done and I have the promise of my friend

Roberta making dinner for me tonight with our good friend Metta joining

in and I work well with a reward waiting for me on the other side.

Who doesn't?