Here are pictures from our Christmas in a nice little movie for your enjoyment! ;) We had a nice Christmas at home. The kids were up bright and early as evidenced in the pictures by their bed heads! I actually took all the pictures while still in my night gown, although you will NOT see a picture of me from Christmas morn! Dom gave me a new camera, which I was not expecting, since we weren't supposed to get each other anything. When we have "lots" of money, we buy each other gifts. When money is tight we don't and just plan to eat our favorite foods on Christmas, which means seafood!! But he has "owed" me a new camera since last Christmas when he took my camera to work with him and dropped it. I've been able to still use it, but the LCD is broken. So I was pleasantly surprised with a new camera. A very nice one that I'm not sure I will every truly understand how to work, because it is a little complicated.
Dom and I enjoyed our seafood dinner of peel & eat shrimp, crab legs, & lobster. Always look forward to gaining a few pounds from all that butter! The kids had their little smokey hot dogs, summer sausage and by request from Alex, mac & cheese. I usually make cinnamon rolls for breakfast on Christmas morn, but Alex had requested bagels which he doesn't get to eat on a regular basis, so it was an easy breakfast for me to make. After all the dozens and dozens of cookies I made the week prior, I was glad not to have to bake another thing.
I decided to make lots of cookies this year, more than ever before. I invited a few friends over to exchange cookies with and also for all of our kids to ice cut-out sugar cookies. The kids had fun and created a nice little mess, but my friend Tammy's oldest two daughters cleaned up for me. That was nice! I made way too much, as I still have tons of cookies after giving some to three of my friends, the mail carrier (who always gives things to my kids on holidays and lollipops on a regular basis), the nursing home where we went to sing Christmas carols, and I sent some to work with Dom for his co-workers to enjoy. I doubled every recipe and tripled a few things. There were buckeyes (tripled), PB cookies with a Hershey kiss on top (that some child keeps eating just the kiss off of and leaving the cookie behind), orange cookies (my sister's recipe), a chocolate cookie with PB in the middle, snickerdoodles, brownies with white chocolate drizzled on top of and then sprinkled with crushed candy canes, two-toned brownie with the chocolate part on bottom and a light brown brownie (minus the cocoa) on top with M&M's, this delicious chocolate/caramel candy thing that tastes just like a snickers bar, & peanut brittle (triple). I think that's it!!! Oh, and don't forget the sugar cookies with icing!!! Whew, was I tuckered out after all that baking!
The kids and I enjoyed singing carols in our neighborhood and going to a local nursing home to sing to the residences there. The neighborhood caroling was kind of a bust, since it was rescheduled to another night due to rain and then the night we did it, it was freezing!! Think 30's, burr. My neighbor put hay bales in the back of a trailer that we towed behind my car. So she and I plus my kids and her son rode around in the trailer. We only hit two houses for a couple of reasons, one it was freezing, two we got a late start because the song sheets she had printed were missed placed and we had to figure out which songs we were going to sing. The kids were a little disappointed that they didn't get to sing at more houses but we still had the nursing home to do. The day we were to do that, all the kids woke up coughing. Alex had already been sick and had been to the doctor, but then all the kids came down with it. But we went anyway, in hopes that I could at least deliver the cookies, but wasn't sure if I should go in with the sick kids. I met two other friends there and they went in ahead of me, while I stayed outside with the kids waiting for them to came back out and tell me whether the staff thought we should stay outside or not. They told us to come on in, just keep our distance. So the kids were able to sing, and were glad of that. I'm glad we were able to hopefully spread a little joy there.
I hope all of you had a very Merry Christmas as well! Here are those pictures set to music from Micheal W. Smith's Christmastime CD, a medley of I Saw Three Ships-Joy To The World. Enjoy!
