Reading other blogs it's clear that Christmas this year was a varied experience from Stephanie's Happiest of Holidays to Troy's Crappy Holidays. I guess mine was somewhere in between.

The family dinner I was so worried about went off without a hitch. My brother behaved himself and Neal seemed to get along nicely with the smokers. It's funny in my family that all of the smokers are in-laws. It's like a club. And during family gatherings there are always times when the 'smokers' get to go outside and smoke and have a chance to talk bad about the family in private. LOL At least that's how I assume it goes. As a non-smoker and a non-in-law I'm not privy to that info. But Neal declared my family 'not nearly as bad as he expected' so that's good.

Santa Shawn came through and I got the digital camera I always wanted. It was a 'complete surprise'! ;-)

I also got a deep fryer which is the other thing I had asked for. So now I can pack on the pounds AND have photographic evidence of it! Woo hoo!

Shawn got Aiden the Robot that I wouldn't get him because it was too expensive. It's still in the box because we can't afford batteries for it at the moment. I got Aiden Bionicles which he LOVES and refuses to part with. In fact when bed time came and I said "Aiden lets go to bed" he replied "Nope, sorry, can't I have to Play!" And play he did all night long!

I got Kathrynn a bunch of My Little Ponies. I was stumped on what to get her for a 'big present' so I just got a lot of little ones. :-) She loved it. Shawn got her Hamsters. After forbidding me from getting her hamsters he comes home from shopping with two elaborate hamster cages saying he couldn't think of anything else. Grrr.

Since I had been originally scheduled to work Christmas Morning we planned to open all of our presents Christmas Eve. When it turned out I didn't have to work the (bigger) children couldn't be persuaded to wait the extra day so we went ahead as planned. It worked out Ok though because that gave us the chance to go out after opening presents and buy the hamsters for the cages. We came home with two females Belle and Cinderella.



I got Shawn a Leather Jacket which looks REALLY hot on him! And it was a big surprise. He never suspected for a moment what it was going to be.

And I got Neal an alarm clock which is everything you could ever want in an alarm clock. Alarm/clock/radio/phone/CD player/nightlight.

We also got a wireless network for our house. That was Shawn's gift from Neal but really all it's good for at the moment is making it so Neal can have a computer in the basement. So really it was more Neal's gift to himself. But Shawn's happy so what do I care?

Shawn and Neal seemed genuinely surprised that somehow I only had two gifts under the tree. Apparently they overestimated the children's ability to go out and do some shopping for mom on their own. LOL

Kathrynn said it was the best Christmas ever.