Christmas!

Leo comes downstairs to see his Santa loot...

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Henry checks out his cupcakes for his kitchen...

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Leo loves his "color duds" that turn the bathwater into colors...

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More Henry...

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Time for Christmas Breakfast! We had Eggos and sausage...in our Shrek shoes of course...


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Leo loves his Bolt Wii game from Gran and Grandpa...

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And Henry loves his Richard Scarry books from Gran and Grandpa...

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Nana sent Henry some slippers. Henry LOVES, LOVES, LOVES footwear of any sort...so we had to try these on...

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He quickly believed figured out that the slippers were like ice skate on the concrete floors and had to take them for a spin!

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Our good friends, The Hutchesons, came over for dinner on Christmas Night. We so enjoyed sharing Christmas dinner with them. We used a menu from Southern Living as our guide and had a wonderful meal. We did a salad, yeast rolls, an onion pudding (medium on this!), asparagus, and beef tenderloin for dinner. With yummy red wine...and iced tea! Miss Allie (*loud cough* YANKEE!!!) was interested to learn that no Southern Christmas table is complete without iced tea!

Miss Allie assembles the salads.

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Miss Allie had an unfortunate incident...involving a spilled drink...that required her to put her pants in the drier within an hour of arriving. So some of our "formal dinner" was done in workout shorts.

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Tomato soup with Christmas Tree croutons. (I made those Christmas Trees!)

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Deviled Eggs. This wasn't on the "official" Southern Living menu, but I'm sure it was an oversight! Every Christmas Dinner has to have Deviled Eggs!

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Group photo by the one and only Leo!

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The beef tenderloin was so yummy - melt in your mouth!

After dinner, we had my yummy Cream Cheese Pecan Cake. I copied the Southern Living illustration, and I have to say...mine was even more beautiful. I used rosemary from my "garden" for decoration.


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Close up of the "embellishments."!!!

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All of the offspring wrestle after dinner...

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We had a wonderful Christmas! The boys loves their loot from Santa, and it's nice to have friends to share the holiday with when family is far away.

Christmas Eve in Coppell

Happy Christmas Eve! We have had a WONDERFUL day. We are loving being in our own home for the first time for Christmas.

We started the day by Mommy cooking for our big dinner tomorrow while Daddy took the boys out to breakfast and to visit Santa at Bass Pro Shop. Of course, if it's at Bass Pro...some shooting has to be involved.


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Then they had their pictures made with Santa. We are a "no-force" family when it comes to this. This is actually the first year Leo has wanted to get close to Santa, and Henry just wanted to stand with Daddy behind Santa.


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Tonight we opened a few presents...


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And put our Christmas PJs on and left Santa some cookies and milk. And a carrot for the reindeer.


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Our self-portrait. I love this picture.


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Christmas decorations

We're having minimalist Christmas decor this year. I just haven't had tons of time for it - busy eating bon-bons and watching soaps, right?

I love to put up a lighted garland and then hang the cards we receive on it. In our old house, I put it around a kitchen window. In the new house, I did the staircase. This picture doesn't really do it justice - it's pretty, and you can see the garland from the street at night through the window above the front door.


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We have a little table top tree that we put out of the reach of little hands. We might get a bigger tree in a couple of years. For now, I love not having to worry about Henry pulling the tree over. He also doesn't understand about not opening gifts, so we have to keep those out of reach. We think it looks great on this TV Hutch that Aunt Carolyn gave us several years ago.


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We also put up lights outside this year b/c that is very popular in this neighborhood. I don't have a picture, but I did simple white lights in the bushes and also used a couple of lighted topiaries that mama gave me.