Christmas

Had a fantastic Christmas.
Christmas Eve we spent @ home doing last minute things for The Day
Skyped with some pretty excited kiddos in Alberta
Watched The Bishop's Wife and ate our traditional Christmas Eve pizza
Then off to bed with "visions of sugar plums dancing in our heads"

Once we were up we did our stocking opening, had croissants, clementines, chocolate, and coffees
Opened our gifts --- I got a nifty racing red hand mixer and lovely artisan earrings
Then got ourselves dodid up.
Packed .. and I mean packed ... up the Civic and off to Arnprior

What fun!!! Even tho Miss D really had no idea what was happening she totally enjoyed the attention and well the STUFF.
We skyped again with our Alberta contingent who were still pretty stoked.
They were so excited to see Miss D open the gifts from them

D loves Nona's bangles so Santa brought her some of her own.
It's still fun playing with Nona's tho ...

 




Later in the afternoon Miss D's other G parents arrived --
Mimi and Opa
More attention and more stuff
It was so much fun

They brought her an awesome rocker chair.

she LOVES it!

Then time to get that Christmas dinner on the table
Everyone contributed which was great
I did the turkey and gravy and a sausage dressing. And brought a bunch of baking.
Sio did Potatoes and sweet potatoes
Mimi brought Brussel sprouts with bacon and a very yummy raspberry white chocolate mousse cake
HB did his traditional Challah
We all did a bang up job and everything was (as my grand son Miles likes to say)  deeeee licious
 I made everyone a sugar cookie mitten place card.

After dinner we played with Miss D, had a few drinks, and just enjoyed the evening.

HB and I spent the night.
In the morning there was putting together a couple of Miss D toys, colouring, digging play doh out of floors, giving her new fav toy Violet (from Aunt Holly) a ride in her new Mega Blocks wagon

Then breakfast of HB's most awesome candied orange Brioche --- soooooo good, scrambled eggs, hash browns, and of course clementines and coffee.

Spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing at home, watching a bit of TV, and looking forward to our awesome hot turkey sandwiches

So here it is Sunday morning
Freezing rain everywhere.

HB is doing the Carleton Place Christmas Bird Count ... he has coordinated this thing for the last ten years
I have the feeders all topped and fresh new suet in all the suet containers.
See the side bar for my suet recipe.
It was very crunchy out there.
Walk like a penguin weather --- remember those commercials?  LOL
I used to go out in the field but I prefer to have a relaxing day and just watch my feathered friends from the comfort of my family room
So far lots of activity -- chick a dees, white breasted nuthatches, downy woodpecker.
I have my camera set up in the window to catch a few shots.


Our tortiere is made up and ready for the oven
I am hoping I can look past the dusty furniture and odds and ends that need to be put away and the laundry I know has to be done
And get caught up on some of the knitting projects that I just did not get finished