Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00359

Christmas Day is finally here! We’ve been building up to this day since the first of December. Our morning was spent opening gifts at our house accompanied by a note from Santa for the kids thanking them for the cookies and milk plus extra carrots for the Reindeer. We enjoyed cinnamon rolls on the floor as we opened our stockings. The kids were great in their gift giving again this year. They pick out things from the Christmas Shop at school each year and they do a great job picking things that Allison and I will like. They got a few nice things themselves. Andrew got the full collection of The Playmobil Movie toys and Eva a new camera that prints out pictures immediately on ZINK! paper. Allison got me tickets to go see Nate Bargatze at the Vets in April and I got her tickets to see Gary Gulman at Foxwoods in January. No crazy big gift for the family this year like last year’s tickets to Rock of Ages. Although, I did take a look at tickets for Motley Crue and Poison and Fenway and figured that changing the refi on the house to include that lottery winners type splurge was not gonna happen. Those prizes are CRAZY!

In the afternoon we went over to my parent’s house where my sisters and their families were along with my Uncle Jim and Grandpa Rick. Uncle Rich came a bit later. We had a nice brunch and opening the gifts this year was a bit more relaxed than previous years, which was nice. I even think I got to see most of what the kids got.

My sister Tar and I went in on that framed sign for our parents. I thought of this way too late and Shelby wasn’t able to hop in because she is way more on top of the holiday shopping that we are because she had already picked out great gifts for Mom and Dad. The sign says Grandview because that was the name of our Guest House while we were growing up. We figured that this would be a nice addition to the sun porch there.

No late night tonight. It was home and bed rather early.

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00358

On our Christmas Eve we have the family over to our house. Allison makes a chicken stew for everyone and my Mom and Dad, Tara and Erik come over to enjoy a fun night. We had a really nice time, too. Before we have our dinner we go to the 4:30 Mass at our Church. It was a pretty subdued Mass and even the Nativity scene was subdued. We learned later on that it was on purpose and it only focused on the Holy Family. The reason for that was that this is a year ahead for everyone to take time to focus on their own families. That means taking the time to be with each other on the day to day. Make time for meals and more. There is a commercial out there that says that families today get 37 minutes of focused time together each day. That is way to little.

I know that is not the case in our house. We are very much together and doing things together. We try very hard to make meals a focus of time to talk and learn about everyone’s day. It is a little thing but it is what we can focus on.

Our night was a great one, too. It was so nice to have the whole family there with their Mem and Grandfather and Auntie Tara and Uncle Erik. They even had Lexi with them and the kids were delighted by that. The cats, not so much. But they hide upstairs when anyone comes over anyway.