Christmas in Review

I have some unexpected time alone at home today, so I thought it might be a good opportunity to do some catching up here.  I have missed Show & Tell the last couple weeks, and I still haven't shared pictures from our vacation so I have my work cut out for me!



We had Christmas dinner about a month ago, when we visited my family in Alberta.  This is the annual Christmas dinner picture - my brothers and sister and I got in the habit of making sure we had either a fork or a glass to our mouth whenever my mom would try to take a picture of us at a family dinner.  Over the years, this became such a tradition that it is now expected at such occasions.





Kennady and her girl cousins each get an Annual Christmas nightgown made by my aunt.  Here they are in the 2007 Edition:



So that was Christmas with my family in Alberta.  Once we were back home, we had to finish decorating our own house and prepare for another Christmas celebration here.

The tree:



And a couple of special ornaments... this one is from last year's Christmas vacation to Disney World:





And from this year's Christmas vacation to Alberta:



My nativity set:



Poinsettias grown by my DH (for more poinsettia info, go here):





I typically don't take many pictures of the kids opening gifts etc, but I took this one of Spencer and Landon this year:



They are busy sorting out their McDonalds hockey cards.  (McDonalds in Canada puts out a set of hockey cards each winter and it is a favorite set for the boys - and DH! - to collect.  A highlight of every Christmas is opening the McDonalds hockey cards that our Canadian family members send as gifts.)

And for something rather silly... the church youth had a Christmas party a couple weeks ago and we were all encouraged to dress up with a Christmas theme.  Most of those who came dressed up wore Santa hats or a reindeer antler headband.  But Harrison claimed he wanted to do something that had only the vaguest connection to Christmas.  This is what he came up with:



You'll probably need to look closer:



They are --- CHESTNUTS!!!!!  I know... groan.  LOL

Harrison asked me what I was dressing up as, and I said "I'm not dressing up, I'm going to wear my Pirate Christmas shirt"  He said "that's not a costume"  so I said "fine, I'll dress up to match the t-shirt"



I only wish I'd had some big plastic candy canes to tape behind my head...