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Monday, December 26, 2011

Christmas 2011

This was the best Christmas ever: relaxing, good food, a happy child, a few presents, etc. It was just what I needed after an insane year of juggling my research, my qualifying exam preparation, living apart from Dave, and raising a toddler. Just us Bowers all snuggled up in our home and we stayed in our PJs all day long.

Most of my holidays are crazy busy with lots of family members around (except one back in 2004 when I spent Christmas flying to Cape Town for an internship so I spent it with no one). So this was my "smallest" Christmas otherwise, since I was Eddie's age and spent the holiday alone with my parents.

We set out the gifts the night before so Eddie could see them when he got up. It was a great morning because Eddie didn't get up until nearly 9am. I suspect this or maybe next year is our last "normal" Christmas morning. Pretty soon Eddie'll realize that he can wake us up super early.

After a leisurely breakfast of oatmeal, bacon, and eggs we opened up our gifts. We were pretty stingy on the gifts: only 4 for Eddie and 1 for each of us parents. But he got to open his 3 gifts from Grammy and Papa Bower at Zennie's and he'll open more at my folks' house at new year's. Since I accidentally left Dave's gift from me at my parents' house, all he got were some slippers from Eddie. Dave surprised me with a Kindle Touch reader, which is pretty cool. Although I'll always be partial to real books, this is a welcome change. It'll be SUPER nice to have a one-hand device like this next time I am nursing a baby (in a few years)--I remember how hard it was to juggle a squirmy baby and a book during hours and hours of nursing. My first purchase was Alexandra Fuller's newest book and I'm enjoying it a lot.

The rest of our day was spent cooking and playing with Eddie's big present--a huge Bruder excavator toy. He scooped and dumped all the balls of wrapping paper and wooden blocks he could.At noon Dave threw a rack of ribs on the grill over low heat and they cooked for the next 5 hours. I rolled and cut the tomato and spinach pasta dough (red and green, how festive!). Right before our Christmas dinner I sauteed up some broccoli, pumpkin, fennel, and cauliflower with satsuma zest and juice (wow, yum). We ate our supper around 5:30pm and then headed out in the car to view some Christmas lights on "candy cane lane." I think it is cool that this whole court participates in decorating their houses in lots of lights; it isn't as lavish as Deacon Dave's in Livermore, but it is still very nice. I love the little "Davis" touches: a cloth diapered baby ginger bread boy and Santa pulling a bike trailer full of presents.Then we got a Red Box movie (The Adjustment Bureau...soooooooooooo good) and headed home. After some more chocolate peanut butter cheesecake and homemade strawberry ice cream we called each of our parents so Eddie could wish them a happy Chriastmas and then we put Eddie to bed so we could watch our movie.

What a great holiday. I hope each of YOU had the perfect Christmas, too!

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