Final Christmas Post

And here is the last of it...

Christmas Eve morning - we are at the birthday party and forgetting about Santa for awhile. Xhulian (pronounced "Julian" - it's an Albanian spelling) plays happily at my sister's house.

Stella struggles with her baby (also at my sister's).

Back at our house Xheson (pronounced "Jason") cuddles with Stella). These boys are her uncles...because they are Erik's younger brothers (children of Erik's dad and his wife). They all just moved here from Italy...it's kind of a long story.

The Christmas Eve FROM SCRATCH gingerbread house-making tradition is begun.

Nobody wants to go to bed because Santa is coming.

And so we read, 'Twas the Night Before Christmas...", and before we knew it...

...Christmas morning was here.

Santa was so good to us.

Stella loved the picture that Xheson painted for Erik.

She gets a little stovetop espresso maker so she can be just like Daddy in the morning.

And this was from the Big Man himself, left under the tree unwrapped.

Time for stockings.

Let's go play with all of our new cool stuff.

As Stella would say (when she hasn't voluntarily plugged herself up), Aawshum (as in, Awesome).

Time to get dressed for Christmas Day guests and dinner!

The men wait for the meal...

Stella sets the table.

Christmas night has come.

And we greet Christmas night with full bellies...

...lots of mulled wine...

...and lots of love.

Merry Christmas, Baby.

X-mas Catch-up Continued

We had some nice warm days before Christmas and the big freezes (and snow...in Austin!).

Grandpa (my dad) joins us for caroling at the capital, and the lighting of the Texas capital building and Congress Ave.

We try to go every year.

Messin' around the house before Christmas.

Homemade hot chocolate can NEVER be wasted.

The tree is a total wonder this year.

Grandpa Ralph (my late mother's husband) comes for a visit and brings a rocking horse!

Boy does she love Grandpa.

Clothing optional Christmas fun.

We try out our new rule: "You can touch with one finger..." Too bad it only works when we're looking at her...

Playing in Stella's room.

Uncooperative typewriters...hate 'em.

Making Christmas cookie dough and fudge and dough and fudge and dough...

I so love it all. But I'm glad it's over.

Pre-Xmas Catch-up

I spent hours uploading pictures and writing captions only to have Blogger not save it everytime I got up to nurse... Here's what it saved, and out of frustration, I'll start another post for the rest.

Some pics from the days before Christmas...

We do an early Christmas with one of my sisters (and her husband and four kids). Cousin Angela is glad we are distracted with getting everyone to smile so that she can sneak her gift in...

The oldest of my sister's kids has a birthday on Christmas Eve. Pretty much no matter what, the family gets together on the morning of Christmas Eve to have cake and forget about X-mas chaos for awhile. You can see Stella peaking around the cake with her cousins.

And since we had Erik's family in town this year, we brought them along for the chaos!

Xheson thought it was Heaven.

And I think Grandpa even had fun...