La Petite Famille: Christmas Festivities, Part 1

For the first time in 4 years, I had the luxury of a real vacation at Christmas this year and it was so nice! After entertaining some thoughts of attempting to travel across the country for the holidays, we chose in favor of staying home and, after dealing with the weather we received as an early Christmas present and hearing about all the travel nightmares, are we sure glad we did! Things were relatively quiet around our house, and the table was only set for 3, but it was a peaceful and happy holiday.

Santa did arrive at our house, but all the other presents under the tree also made their appearance on Christmas Eve (definitely some good advice I received from my friend, Melissa!), so I think it was all a little overwhelming for Larson when he first came down the stairs in the morning. We had to put the Santa gifts practically in front of his nose before he realized there were more presents.

I had a lot of fun cooking for the holiday and managed, for Christmas dinner, to successfully bake, roll and frost (ganache, actually :) a yule log. It was made with a lot of chocolate and oh! so delicious...

Also on the menu was a ham with an orange/cinnamon/maple syrup glaze (never baked a ham before either...), mashed potatoes with some properly stored spuds from our CSA, and a salad just the way I like it: greens with plenty of cheese, fruit and nuts. Not too fancy, but with only two adults eating the food, I didn't want to be eating leftovers for a month.

Here is Larson showing off two of his favorite presents: a digger and Diesel 10 from Grandma and Grandpa. And a demonstration of how the turntable works. Check out all the snow outside!

We did actually make it to church on Christmas Eve for a very lovely service that was more crowded than I expected, given the weather. Larson was very impressed by the presence of a harp in the sanctuary and proudly named off all the instruments he could identify. Then he spent a good part of the hour happily stuffing Christmas greenery into the barrel of his cement mixer truck. I was happy that he at least chose a quiet activity.

Santa brought a Playmobil farm for Larson, who had fun watching me put it together and seeing how all the little parts worked. He got a tractor and extra farm "stuff" from Nana & Bompa and has declared that he now wants his own saw so the he can cut things. We'll see about that one...