Merry Christmas!

Today was Christmas, and in the words of Strip, it was the best Christmas ever. And honestly? It was. Because of our families' food allergies I had given up on trying to do something big. Our normal menu was thrown out the window and I decided to do an herb roasted chicken with gravy, broccoli, sweet potato casserole and a wine herb rice. I also decided that I had no desire to get up at 4 am to start a meal and didn't want to cut Christmas short to slave away in the kitchen. So, Hubs got to work on his famous Christmas eve cinnamon rolls.

Christmas morning, we locked the kids in our room and all the adults gathered in the kitchen for coffee and cinnamon rolls

Yum!

Then, we set up the camera and were ready for the kids to come downstairs. Strip caught sight of her doll house, and it was all over. Sweet Nugget? He came running down the stairs calling roll. "Mommy!! Daddy!! Papa!!! Ma!!! Uncle P!!!!' then ran to Hubs for a Hug. Next? He made a mad dash to the hot pink doll house. Oh well. The kids took their sweet time opening all of their gifts. The one thing Strip wanted was a Nutcracker (I'm sure so she could pretend she's Clara). I was super sneaky at Strip's ballet company's performance of the Nutcracker and swiped the LAST glitz covered Nutcracker, smiled to myself as I wrapped it in Santa's paper and waited for the moment her Christmas dream came true.

After going through her stocking, she started to unwrap it. Paper removed, I asked, "Ohhh! I wonder what it is!!" to which she replied, "It looks like the box that shiny nutcracker came in!" Seriously?! HOW would she know that?! They weren't even in the box!! Could she be the youngest child ever to give up on Santa?! Ugh. She's too smart for her own good.

After all the presents were unwrapped, Hubs fired up the grill for some yummy bacon wrapped shrimp and I made the kids Christmas shaped peanut butter sandwiches while they watched the Nutcracker on ice. Nugget went down for a nap and I started making "lunch." We are normally rushing and don't eat before two, but this year, we took it easy, snacked, drank coffee (out of our new Keurig coffee maker! Love it!) and ate when it was ready at 5:00

We all sat down after kids were in bed, dishes were cleared and wrapping paper was stuffed outside. I looked at the cable box and it said "726." I was convinced that it was the channel, but upon closer investigation, it was actually only 7:26 pm and we were all pooped! Now the only question that remains is where are we going to put all of this stuff?!