Christmas in February?

Not really but it seems like that considering this is the first time I've actually had a chance to sit down and look through these pictures. What can I say? Life has thrown us some curve balls over the past couple of months....one of them actually occurring Christmas Eve night...more on that in a bit.

So the Christmas season was, truth be told, a little hard on me this year. I found it amazingly difficult to manage a full class load, Christmas activities, Christmas shopping/baking/delivering/planning, etc. And of course, the weather didn't help. Days before Gammy and Uncle Ryan's expected arrival, the weather decided to throw us a forecast of wintry mix early Christmas morning. Freaking out that Gammy might not be able to make it down, plans were changed and a midnight arrival on Christmas Eve was scheduled.

So here we are on Christmas Eve sprinkling the reindeer food. Cheesy, yes. Ridiculous, maybe. Worth it for seeing the amazement in my child's eyes, definitely!! And yes, we even put out a "special" key for Santa since we have a wood stove rather than a fireplace.

The three of us enjoyed a nice Honey Baked Ham Christmas eve dinner (courtesy of Mr. Sweeny and Cheryl), we put Emma to bed, got started on assembling some last minute gifts and waited for Gammy's arrival.

Literally minutes before Gammy driving down the driveway, E started coughing and crying. She quickly settled down so we thought very little of it. However, within minutes she started again and some motherly instinct told me something was wrong. Sure enough, when I entered her room I could hear her struggling to breath and her face was really swollen. Concerned for her airway, Luke and I left Gammy and Uncle Ryan to the unpacking and rushed to the ER. After three hours, a dose of Benadryl and a whole lot of nothing we were on our way back home.

Needless to say, it wasn't an early Christmas morning for us but we did eventually get around to opening some presents.

Her she is surveying the presents.




Trying to figure out the wrapping paper obstacle.





How quickly they master this task!





Lovin' her shopping cart





Strollin'





Sportin' her new Elmo slippers ;)





Playing with her kitchen







Trying out her apron from Aunt Laura and Uncle Chris

(In case you can't read it, it says: EMMA, Sous Chef)



Posing for the camera!


In addition to a wonderful Christmas morning (despite the fact that we were all sleep deprived) I must brag a little about my first ever Christmas dinner. Keep in mind that I HAVE to have everything organized to a T and that just wasn't the case for dinner. Truth be told I had begun researching what I wanted to cook back in October with every intention of doing a "trial run" well before Christmas...needless to say that never happened. In actuality, just days before Christmas our oven stopped working so I wasn't even sure we were going to be able to cook dinner. (Luckily Sears came out and was able to repair it.) Anyways, for those of you who are adventurous in the kitchen, I highly recommend trying individual beef wellingtons for such an occasion as Christmas. Although the name sounds pretty fancy they are actually fairly simple to make and are super delicious! And of course no dinner is complete without an equally fancy dessert....homemade, everything from scratch, Silken Chocolate Tart (Bride and Groom First and Forever Cookbook). Okay, so enough bragging about my cooking skills!

Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas.