Christmas and New Year's Day

I've been rather recalcitrant in my posting lately. I'd like to blame the busy-ness of the holidays, but the week before Christmas was actually the busiest, and you already know all about that.

On Christmas Eve, we went to Papa and Grandma's (The Momma's dad and stepmom) house for a little celebration and a fantastic dinner. The girls loved hunting for the younger pictures of their momma on the Christmas tree. They also like watching their Uncle D attempt to juggle--D and Miss Bubbly became fast friends pretty quickly. We're going to have to work out the confusion surrounding having two Uncle S---s in the family, however. And we love him and Aunt E------ enough not to call him "the other Uncle S."

Christmas itself was quite low-key. We didn't even wake up until 7:30 or 8, quite possibly because we've chosen not to play up the Santa Claus aspect of Christmas and as a result the girls were not as wound up as they could have been.

For breakfast we had cinnamon rolls and clementine oranges--it was perfect, especially since I used frozen bread dough that had all night to rise. The rolls were ready within an hour. Yum! While they were baking, we commenced with the present opening, as you can see below:

There are far too many pictures of me like this on Christmas morning. I should learn to comb my hair and apply a *little* makeup before emerging! The Hub has no mercy with the camera.

Among other things, I made the girls each a sweater for Christmas. If you know The Eldest at all, you know that the blue one is hers. Miss Bubbly was happy enough with her green one--I think it needs a little time to grow on her.
After opening presents and being reminded of family members near and far who take excellent care of us, we ate a simple lunch and went on a hike. Oh yes. The girls wanted to do SOMETHING, so we hiked up A Mountain. That's the hill called a mountain near ASU, just a couple minutes' drive north of us. The girls enjoyed the "walk" so much that they begged for a repeat performance on Thursday. We obliged. We also went to see the Christmas lights display at the Mesa Temple on Christmas. It was a great way to cap off such a relaxed day.

The entire week felt like a vacation, since The Hub wasn't going in to his internship. We've really enjoyed the time together, but I've gotten out of our usual routine and the house is in need of a good dusting and scrubbing. Please, no surprise visits until we're back to normal!

Here's a great picture of the girls from a couple of days ago:
I had to alter the dress The Eldest got for her birthday a little bit so that it wouldn't fall off of her and I may have gone a little bit overboard. Or I got too lazy to trim back the pieces when I finally figured out how much of the neckline they took up. Ah well. The princess is happy with the ensemble and her little sister looks forward to borrowing it when she's big enough.

New Year's was also quite understated. We went to Omay's house for dinner and a delayed Christmas, as she'd been out of town. The girls enjoyed their time there and seemed especially fond of Omay's signature cranberry-marshmallow salad. We got them home and in bed at the normal time, then stayed up to see in the New Year. I almost made it, but I definitely slept through a majority of the 11 o'clock hour. The Hub laughed at me, but he's the night owl in the family, so staying up until midnight was a piece of cake for him.

And there you go. We had our holidays just how we like them--full of family and friends and low-key celebrations.