iLove christmas

christmas is over - far too soon, as always. it seems that the older i get, the longer it takes for me to get into the holiday spirit. and then as soon as i'm full of christmas cheer, it's over. sadness.

as anticipated, it was quite an early start - when the alarm went off at 6:15, i rolled over, groaned, and dragged my ass up out of bed. the hub and the bean were still out, so i tiptoed out, flipped the switch to light up the tree, and went to check on the teen, who was groggy but awake.

the bean was none too thrilled to be up so freaking early.

and then it was present time!

her first gift was from her sister - the rocket from "little einsteins," one of her favorite shows on playhouse disney.

the teen was super thrilled to open this present from the ILs.

even mollydog got a present. no, not the gum.

it was a merry jonas christmas. that's the "burnin' up" book and an '09 calendar she's molesting here.

the bean, sporting her sister's JoBros beanie (sadly, too small for her nugget), dug into her stocking.

she also helped herself to my gift from the teen - a 3-pack of juicy couture iPhone cases.

after powering through the rest of her gifts, i presented the teen with the grand finale:

her very own iPhone, oh-so-cleverly packaged in a JoBros mini purse. last year, we gave her the iPod touch, and i'd wrapped it in several bigger boxes, so i couldn't pull that one again this year. later, she told me "i thought the purse was cute, but i like what came inside SO way better."

as for me, i opened two boxes from the kate spade store. one contained a soft, snuggly scarf in my favorite colors, and this was in the other one:

whee! i love my new bag and scarf.

as for the hub, who's a huge james bond fan, he got a boxed set of all the movies (save one, which was just released a couple of months ago) on dvd, a bottle of dolce & gabbana's "the one" cologne, and a bunch of fun stocking stuffers. y'all know how he feels about this blog, so i try not to post a lot of pictures of him. i'm sure it's not difficult to visualize his gifts, which he loved.

the aftermath.

the bean was spent.

we snuck in a few sleepy-looking, non-made-up group pics.

the bean tried on one of her new jammies:

and the dog had already chewed off one of the antlers from her poor little reindeer toy.

the real bummer was having to take the teen to her dad's, but i took comfort in the fact that she would be back the next day. and when we got back home, i turned on the tv and found the yule log.

i made some french toast for breakfast and we ate it as we watched the disney world christmas day parade on tv, and then we took turns hopping in the shower and getting ready to hang out at the hub's grandparents' to have our prime rib and exchange presents. the bean looked adorable in her christmas dress:

the hub somehow ended up with the job of carving the roast:

which was served with yummy creamed corn and the potatoes i made (using a recipe i stole from ssinca, who stole it from this site):

brown sugar brie made an appearance:

due to lack of a proper high chair, the bean ended up tied to a chair with a kitchen towel. heh.

it was a delicious meal, a lovely afternoon/evening with the ILs, and a wonderful christmas day. santa was generous with everyone despite the economy woes, and now we're looking forward to new year's eve on colorado boulevard.

with about a million other people. yikes.

and a side note: after i posted about the blog's face-lift and custom domain name the other day, i came up with a post title that's so way better than the boring one i published. it SO should've been "dr. 902-wan-0"! bwahahahahaha! i crack me up.