The first of a few entries that need to be blogged...

A late Merry Christmas to one and all - this time of year is extremely hectic for me...

Last weekend, we had Dad's surprise 60th birthday party....HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD!!!! His birthday is really the day after Christmas but we had to celebrate it early for holiday reasons....

Dylan celebrated his birthday - we went out for Chinese food on his actual birthday December 23rd. HAPPY BIRTHDAY DYLAN!!!!

Then Christmas Eve...visiting Aunt Nancy and the EB gang!!! Hi everyone!!!! I try really hard to be all done Christmas-ing by Dylan's birthday and I never get there....I spent half the night wrapping the last of the gifts (which weren't supposed to be many but felt like there were a million things to wrap)....I had so much that I had to start while the kids were still awake:

I even tried to wrap Melody because she would not leave me alone with the gifts - and no, I do not wrap their gifts in front of them...I did though make the mistake of wrapping a box of Swiss Cake Rolls in front of them and told them they were for noone when they asked me who they were for...Dylan told Adam that I wrapped a box of Swiss Cake Rolls for noone 3 days before Christmas.
Regarding the picture above: not the best picture I ever took of Melody (a little blurry) but certainly one that evokes Christmas in me.

When I finally got around to taking pictures of the tree and other Christmas things around our house, it was past midnight...
This was a neat picture of my pre-lit Christmas tree. No, the lights are not shaped like snowmen and no, I can't make bokeh shaped like that naturally. I took a pair of these 3-D glasses that change the shape of lights into snowmen and put it in front of the lens and clicked. I have not mastered the art of using artificial filters on my camera but this is not a bad start (I think)...I have other pictures like this that I will have to post another time. In case you were wondering, I shot this photo with my Canon 50mm f1.8 ISO 100 in 1/8 sec. I rested my camera on the arm of my couch and just hit the shutter button.

We ran out of cookies but found a 100 calorie pack of chips deluxe...Adam prepared this plate and cup of milk...yes, those are our everyday plates - they go with the rest of our Disney kitchen. Santa left a note saying that he appreciated us watching his diet but that next year, he would hope that Adam would make some of his homemade cookies - he also said that he liked our plates.


Then Christmas Day - the one day a year that we can wake Angelica up 6:30am (the butt crack of dawn for her) and she'll get out of bed like a pop-tart from a toaster...
This was probably the best picture I took all Christmas morning.
Others that I took:
Dylan's first gun toy ever...I'm not into gun toys but I'm glad that the warnings of no face, head or point blank shootings have been heeded...
And finally, this picture which I am too close to Melody to take - it's the only one I have of all 3 of them at Christmas....

These last 3 pictures were all taken with my Canon 50mm f1.8 ISO 800. The one of Angelica by herself came out best because she had front lighting from our ceiling fan pointed right at her. In the second picture of Dylan by himself, you can see the hint of the Christmas lights from the tree (evident in the coloring of his face). The last picture I took of the 3 of them, I'm too close to Melody and I should have moved a little to my left to capture more of the other kids in the back. I would have been happy with blurring Melody in the picture but I'm so close that you can barely make her out....sigh...next Christmas....

What did Adam get for Christmas? This year, he got a deep-fryer (because the grease from all the fast food he consumes just isn't doing the trick to block up the arteries - yuck - we haven't tried it yet because there is nothing I want to eat less than something deep fried - I just got over the stomach flu). He also got the game Emergency Heroes for Wii - because in real life he is an Emergency Hero and if he wants to practice off hours, he can. There was the box Swiss Cake Rolls (a throwback to a gift from Grammie Marie - God rest her soul - when Adam was little). A "Life is Crap" desk calendar (a mockery of the "Life is Good" trademark) and the gift that I thought would have been the best one: an electric ice scraper...it was so good, that he got me one too. (Santa must have been running a special on these)...

What did I get for Christmas? A jewelry box (from last year's list), an electric throw for the couch (I'm forever cuddled up on my couch with a blanket), an electric ice scraper and 2 tickets to see "Dirty Dancing: the Musical" when it comes to the Opera House in Boston on our 9th wedding anniversary in February. Every year comes our anniversary and the last couple have been a bust in terms of dates - because neither one of us has had the chance to really think about making plans in advance...well, Adam took care of that this coming anniversary...we'll go to dinner before the show and the kids will be sleeping over mom and dad's. Neat-o. How romantic...and hopefully he doesn't think that this Christmas gift covers our anniversary...although being more romantic is part of both our agendas for the coming year.

Stay tuned for another 2 or 3 blog entries this week as part of my new year's resolution to blog more gets a head start...

Thank you, God (and Santa and pooka) for all my gifts - especially my kids and the time to be with my family. I hope in your eyes, I've earned it all....