When was Christmas again?

Some of the family members have been asking about Christmas photos. Oh right. Christmas. When was that again? Seems like a lot has happened in three weeks, but we did have a wonderful week. Steve was home between the holidays, and this year, Stella seemed to understand more about the holiday season, about the fun of giving gifts (and lots of baked goods!) to other people and not *always* expecting gifts to herself. (Although the constant arrival of the UPS man to our house, whether the box was for her, Steve, or the neighbors, still prompted, “a present? for me?”). For us, the Christmas season became fun again, watching it through her eyes… the picking out of the tree, the making of Christmas cookies, the decorating the tree with ornaments basically on the lower half, and I think, quite possibly her favorite, looking at Christmas lights. Luckily, our little cul-de-sac and the adjoining neighborhood over the bridge had quite a bit, so we started taking “nighttime walks” with Scupper after dinner to check out all the lights. “It’s so beautiful!” she would cry, “Mama, did you see that one?” She learned about “chasing lights,” got excited by those awful blowup figurines, and my personal SoCal favorite, “Mama, look at the Christmas palm trees!” So here’s a sprinkling of our holiday fun, in pictures.

Picking out the Christmas tree at the local farm, and of course, the fun way of getting it home on the van.

Sugar cookies – notice the official “Christmas frog” in the pile. She enjoyed these a bit too much!

The bike waiting under the tree… (we found it on craigslist and Steve repainted it and put star stencils on the frame. She was pretty excited. and oh yes, she asked for blue.) Stella also has been fascinated with trumpets as of late (because of seeing angel figurines with trumpets) so Santa brought her a kazoo. Um, why did Santa do that again?

It was the season for hats as Scupper begs for the beef jerky Santa brought Steve in his stocking.

The remnants of Scupper’s Christmas duck. I think it took him about 35 minutes to disembowel it while Stella went for her first “ride” around the house.

Cooking up lunch for us at her new table top stove.

Off they go for a first ride…
We also went to camping with friends from San Diego. I’ll post those pictures soon.