Christmastime 2009

Christmas 2009 was wonderful. Although it was bitter, being the first without my dad, we all managed to remember him as he would want to be remembered. He would not want us mourning him on such a wonderful holiday. We spent time with family, friends and, of course, and lots of delicious food.

Mom on Christmas morning opening her stocking.

P starting on his pile of presents!

I gave mom a few "sentimental" gifts. One was a calender which I made at Walmart{dot}com. It came out really nice! She of course cried. and cried. and cried.

Then I also made her a book (courtesy of my Aunt S who is a Creative Memories distributor) that had all the pictures we used for the picture boards at my dad's wake. I really like how it came out! And of course, she cried some more.

Poppy & Grandma came over later in the day after our traditional egg dish breakfast and nap time :) Poppy is a seasoned gift guesser. I swear. Put any gift in front of him and he will tell you exactly what it is. Sometimes I wonder how he got so good?!

Here's Grandma opening up her gifts. She let Poppy open the "big" joint gifts because he gets about as excited as a small child. It's so cute.

This was mom's Yorkshire pudding. YOWSA! How amazing does that look?! (Mind you, thats coming from a girl who doesn't eat the stuff!) She did an awesome job. Everyone agreed that it was her best one yet! Although, somehow I think we agree to that every year.

After dinner M&J came over for dessert and some laughs. See the exhibit below:

This is M taking a picture of Poppy who fell asleep as the girls were cleaning up the kitchen. I will give him this though, mom bought him the "I-need" from Brookstone and he was "trying it out" and apparently it is amazing because he fell fast asleep. Too funny!

Last but not least we had this homemade chocolate cream pie for dessert. It's Poppy's favorite so I thought I'd try my hand at making a homemade version complete with homemade whipped cream on top. It was delicious, if I do say so myself!

All in all it was a wonderful Christmas. Filled to the brim with great family, great friends and great food!

 Christmastime truly is my favorite time of all!