I swore I wouldn’t do what I always do this year, but I did. That’s why one shouldn’t swear I suppose. What did I do? Well, I started Christmas day with great intentions – I would take pictures the whole day long to capture the essence of the family holiday spirit. Fail! I took a bunch early on then nothing. Sorry!
Christmas eve was calm and quiet. We had planned to go to the evening service but it was past Lucy’s bedtime and my mom wasn’t up to it so we decided to be together instead by staying home and watching “Holiday Inn”. My family is full of musical lovers but surprisingly I was the only one who had ever seen Holiday Inn before. It’s not nearly as good as White Christmas but I’ll take me some Bing anyway I can.
Lucy and I started off early in the morning on getting the Stollen ready. Stollen for breakfast is a tradition on my side of the family. Even though several of us have decided we don’t really like it, we have to eat it because we always have. Lucy didn’t get any this year but she was quite a good helper nonetheless.
Lucy and I are the early birds (well, Lucy is, I have no choice but to follow in her baby footsteps) so we then waited around for everyone else to get up.
She doesn’t know what’s coming but is still pretty excited about it. 
Soon my parent’s were up and we took pictures and waited.
The Craig, Rick and Windsor were up so we opened our stockings and waited.
Lucy played with chapstick and Craig blinded everyone with his new mini-flashlight while the rest of us – you guessed it, waited!
Finally, someone ran up and dragged Ben out of bed. I might feel a little bad about that except that I remember when Rick and I were teenagers and Ben was the excited little kid dragging us out of bed on Christmas morning. So to Ben I say, “What goes around, comes around, bud!”
He did eventually make his way down though and we started opening presents.
mean smart enough to not me take pictures of him before he is presentable either.
Of course, the day didn’t end there, but my picture taking did. Someday I will succeed at capturing more than the present opening. Until then, imaging lovely pictures of:
- visiting with friends
- eating cookies and candy
- putting together a puzzle (a yearly tradition)
- sad faces as we realized the prime rib was not thawed yet (we had given is several days though!)
- happy faces of us all eating waffles (the prime rib was served the next day and it was well worth the wait so no harm done)
- many faces crowded around one iPad watching silly youtube videos
- one happy family!
Looks like Lucy enjoyed it, whether it was completely documented or not. ;)
ReplyDeleteOur girls insist on crepes for Christmas breakfast. We did it once not knowing it would become our tradition. And I'm not crazy about crepes - oh, well. Once a year won't kill me.
We took 10 pictures with my sister's iPhone, so you did much better than us!
ReplyDeleteWhat is stollen? I could google it, but it's more fun to have someone explain.
We opened presents Christmas night. It just worked out that way with our schedules, but after seeing all the chipper faces in your family, I'm glad we didn't try to drag my teenaged brother and sister out of the bed in the morning for gifts!
Karen - Your girls sound like Craig. Our first year we didn't spend Christmas with family and just had Cinnamon rolls so now he wants that to be ourtradition. I got some this year just for him but we didn't get around to making them until a day or two later. Oops. I guess I'll have to be careful what we do this next few years unless I am willing to keep doing it forever.
ReplyDeleteHA - Stollen is a German bread-like cake (or maybe cake-like bread) filled with dried fruit and covered in powdered sugar. Good stollen is well, good. But a lot of stollen you get here is dry which is our big problem. This year we got one with marzipan (a sugar/almond paste) bits in it and that helps it stay moist so it was pretty good.
And Craig's family are a Christmas eve present openers. I think that opening them before the morning is sacriligious (except for the pajamas we get each year, those we open at night) but I must admit, it is much easier to get flattering pictures of people Christmas eve!