Christmas 2012

Christmas should be more about the simple things. Judging by the squeal of delight when she opened this gift, a bag of popcorn was exactly what Erin wanted for Christmas.

Last night we had our annual Christmas celebration with my dad, step mom, sister and our respective familes. Well almost all our respective families. Jimmy and Corinne got their dates mixed up. Jimmy was very surprised when we called him a little after 6 to ask "How far away are you?". His answer, I'm at home and Corinne was at work. They thought we we getting together on January 23rd. In their defense, the past few years we have had this get together in January. Most of us acutally prefer it in January - after the hustle and bustle of the rest of the holiday stuff. However, this year Dad and Dinana are going to Florida for the entire month of January (simply because they can now).

We had a lovely dinner of baked tortellinis and salad. Dinana's baked tortellinis are a family favorite and you could see each of us grin as we walked in the door and smelled it cooking.

Amanda and Bruce

Arron and Emma



After dinner we sat in the living room for the reading of "Red Ranger Came Calling". Dad's been reading it to the girls since 2000. Part of family legend now is the year that Dad & Dinana came to our house and Dad forgot the book and the girls made him go back home and get it. Another year, we had our celebration duing a wind storm that knocked out the power and the story was read by flashlight. This year there were no such hiccups although we did break from tradition and Dad simply read from the chair by the fireplace rather than with all three girls (Emma, Amanda and Erin) gathered round him. We voted this as a better way since this caused him to hold up the book to show us all the pictures. :)

Then came the exchange of gifts. Youngest chooses a gift (for someone else) first then each person who opens one gets to choose the next. After some debate we decided that Emma and Arron would take Jimmy and Corinne's gifts with them since they would likely see both of them sometime this week. There was a brief discussion about divvying them up amongst ourselves but that didn't seem to be in keeping with the Christmas spirit.

Getting gifts is definitely fun. But I truly believe our family has more fun with the telling of stories over and over. No one is spared an emabarassing story if there is one about you to tell and I'm pretty sure no one is without one. No, I won't tell you them here. They are mostly of the kind "You had to be there". Trust me though we get a kick out of them.

Then there is the battle of the boxes. Who got the coolest box. Pretty soon it will be competition I think to see who 'give' the coolest box. Sometimes there is a fuss over who gets to take home the coolest box. Emma called dibs at dinner this year! However, Gumpop made sure that both girls got equally awesome boxes.



Here is a picture of Dave and I. We are still awake although very tired. Here are photos of our accomplishments in the bedroom rehab before going to dinner tonight.

About 3/4 of the wallpaper
is removed off the walls now

All of the paint is off the ceiling.
Obviously this was taken
before we finished for the day.












Today it's off to home depot before they closet to pick up more supplies and then back to the room for more scraping and washing of surfaces.

Merry Christmas!