Christmas Redux

...with photos to follow.

Jeff and I set everything up under the tree before we went to bed, and made sure the kids' stockings were in place. The idea is that they open their stockings when they wake up and then leave us alone for a few hours extra so we can sleep. We pack the stockings full of small gifts and they are all wrapped. Well, Megan (the kid who never ever wants to get out of bed) surprised everyone by waking up at 6:30 and going into her brother's room to wake him up shortly thereafter. So I heard the excited yapping of my six year old from about 7:00 on, but managed to doze for a couple more hours until I finally decided that we had tortured the kids long enough and it was time to get up.

Our Christmas morning tradition is to eat a "nice" cooked breakfast and get dressed before we start opening gifts. This year Jeff made french toast with raisin bread... yum. Eventually the kids finally got their wish and started opening the mountain of gifts under the tree. Everyone in our extended family was so generous to them this year, and we all felt really spoiled! Calum's favourite gifts were the "Ben 10" action figures from Grandad & Carol, which transform into a flashlight and a pair of binoculars, respectively, and a Spongebob "chum bucket" lego kit from Grandma Kay. Megan was delighted to receive a "Go" game, which she has wanted for years, from the same Grandma, and lots of books and Nintendo DS games. I got some USB hand-warming gloves and a set of noise cancelling earphones, both of which were high on my wish list. And Jeff was delighted with the super-spiffy Darth Vader's Tie Fighter lego kit I got him.

Once the gift opening was done, I headed out to one of the two local Starbucks that were open on Christmas day... so civilized! I've gotten so "Vancouverized" that my day is not complete without a nice hot cappucino. Then I finally got a chance to try out Guitar Hero III, which we bought around a month ago but I've just been too busy to play it. My fingers got pretty sore, so I was glad to take breaks to look after the turkey dinner. This year for the first time ever, I made stuffing. I have never liked stuffing, but Jeff loves it so I tried out a recipe that I thought I might like. It actually turned out quite nicely - I put in apples, pecans and dried cranberries and it was pretty good.

Eventually the turkey and all the side dishes were ready so we sat down to stuff ourselves silly. We barely even had room for the berry pie that Jeff made. It was especially nice to have this huge dinner because I was too busy to do much for thanksgiving. We definitely made up for it and we have tons of leftovers to boot. After dinner we all sat down to watch a couple of episodes of Naruto Shippuuden, our latest pick for family anime viewing. It was a great way to end a happy and full day.

Thanks to everyone who sent cards, gifts and Christmas wishes and I hope that all of you reading this had a happy day too.