In an attempt for Christmas redemption

Yeah, so I looked at a lot of the Christmas blogs linked from Megan's site and I felt compelled to redo my Christmas entry, though it be post haste. We had a nice Christmas despite my somewhat melancholy entry before. I think it was somewhat of a healing Christmas as well, for M.

So, let's start with a picture. This is our tree on Christmas Eve.

You can't really see the lights because I used a flash, but they are small multicolored. Yes, we always do multicolor on the tree, and I prefer blinking. There's nothing I like better than in the few days before Christmas, sitting in the living room with all the lights off, and just watching the Christmas tree lights blink and reflecting on the year and life. Sadly, I was too busy to do that this year. More on that to come sometime soon... when I'm less busy.

Here is Nadia on Christmas Eve in her Christmas dress at my cousin Liam's house. We always do my dad's family on Christmas Eve and it was a very nice time. The girls all arrived early to cook: various soups, breads, salads and desserts. Oh, and wine... lots of wine.

Then, Christmas morning, we woke up when Nadia did... 8:30! Nice! We opened our presents around the tree.

There's about 200 pictures of this part of the day, so I'll spare you! Take note of N's hair though. Here's a better one:

Then at 10 am we head over to mom and dad's for Christmas breakfast. A tradition that started when M. and I got married. It was threatened this year b/c my mom's getting tired of making 2 big meals on Christmas day, but it's M.'s favorite part of Christmas (the quiche!) so my sister lobbied hard for it. Here's the table before we pigged out:

As you can see, I do not inherit my hatred for decorating from my mother:

And here's mom and N. by the tree:

And since the natives are now getting restless, I'll sum the rest up quickly. After breakfast, we share family gifts and this goes on for quite some time, despite the fact that every year we say it'll be a slim one. The girls then go and prepare Christmas dinner while the boys play with their toys. This year, they all went outside and hit golf balls around with J.'s new clubs. We had a wonderful ham and scalloped potatoes dinner and then M, N and I left to prepare yet another meal for his mom. It was kind of a stressed, weird way to end the day, but it was something that we needed to do, and it was good. Though we were both working hard to actually get more food down...

So, that was our Christmas, and it was nice. I'm hoping next year I won't spend the whole week before Christmas in another part of the country and I'll have more time to create a more festive atmostphere in our home, but in the end, this turned out just right.