Christmas photos

I'm kind of glad the holidays are behind us. We had a really nice Christmas and spent lots of time with my family, which was great. It's just all the stress of making sure that you've bought all the presents you are supposed to that makes me feel crazy. Also, I was working a lot before Christmas, and then we had a small Christmas celebration at our house on Christmas Day, so just cleaning and getting ready felt a little crazy. Luckily Jeff had some time off, and really did a great job of getting all the food bought and prepared. He made a delicious leg of lamb, red wine mint jelly, roasted potatoes and fennel and a really yummy pannetone/chocolate mascarpone trifle. I'm really glad he loves to cook and is good at it. It takes a lot of the heat off me! My mom also pulled through by bringing a great salad and some shrimp for an appetizer. We got together at my brother Tom & Jenny's house on Christmas Eve with everyone, so there were 20 of us. We had a really nice time, but weren't able to stay all that late because Porter needed to go to bed. Oh well, he'll be able to last longer in a few years!




Connor got a Wii for Christmas, and was pretty excited, but I think he might have liked the SpongeBob toothbrush he got in his stocking better! We've been having fun playing the Wii and are starting to figure out how to play Lego Indiana Jones.

We went out with a group of neighbors for New Years Eve, and I told Connor he was going to have a babysitter. He said "Why?" I said, because we are going out to dinner". He said, "Can I come?". I said, "No, it's just grown-ups". He said, "Why, does everything have booze in it?". That kid cracks me up. Actually they ended up staying at my parents' house overnight and did great. It was really nice of my mom to do that since New Years Eve is her birthday! The kids had fun and I think Grandma and Papa really liked having them spend the night too. We had a really nice dinner at the Downtowner and hung out with neighborhood friends til around 1am or so, just long enough to ring in the New Year and suffer a tiny bit of a hangover the next day. It was nice not having to get up with kids and to sleep in a bit.

Happy 2009!