Merry CHRISTmas!

Christmas came for us about 9 AM after our late night at friends. The girls being older don't tend to get us up as early as they used to which was nice, but also sad. They used to get up really early and wait patiently in their room until we told them to come out. I loved listening to them as they whispered excitedly in their room about Christmas morning. I would get up early to light the tree, turn on Christmas music, sometimes shower, and put our French Bread Casserole or scones in the oven, a traditional morning meal for us. This year I rose when I woke up naturally and put a new casserole in the oven while sipping my coffee. This new casserole is sure to become a tradition. It was a Cinammon French Bread Casserole from......are you ready for this?.......yep, you guessed it....Pioneer Woman. It was amazingly good and tasted a lot like bread pudding. YUM.. Bob had wanted us to wait on breakfast until after opening gifts and for good reason, he had bought our family a Belgian Waffle maker. However, we just used it another morning. Anyone have a good recipe for Belgian Waffles? This one that came with it was very complicated, but good.
Anyway, I digress from my topic!  Here was our little Charlie Brown tree with presents underneath. I was kind of disappointed in the lighting...

The Scribbler switched out my coffee when I wasn't looking and placed it in the very cute blackboard mug from her with a message from her. It said "Merry Christmas, Love you Mom" although I smeared it!

A much better shot of our tree. Even made more surprising by the cat, our Sara, actually out and walking around with a very happy Griffin chewing on a new bone.

The Scribbler posing as a Roman or is that Greek?

Farmer Girl's presents were no surprise as she had picked out her new red peacoat as well as a hat to match. However, this hat was new to her and a surprise too.

A gift from his oldest.

A tree troll? This from his mom along with a steamer train for our woodstove which we really love and had on our "want to buy sometime" list.

A closer shot of our Sara amongst the gifts.

The Scribblers big electronic gift. She also got something I was most excited about. It is called a Graphics board and can be used to draw on like a sketchpad. Then it immediately shows up on your computer screen as you do it too. It also works with animation. She has been wanting something like this for awhile.

This is a joint gift for both of my artistic girls. It is called CoreFX and can be used for all kinds of artistic things on the computer with all kinds of neat apps. They opened it jointly and proceeded to pretend to fight over it......

....Here and......

...and not here, but looking at it happily instead.

An uncommon sight. :)

My clothes horse headed upstairs with her coat, hats, purses, shirts, socks, slippers......

This shot was supposed to have me in it as I am never in the pictures, but the one with me was blurry!!! I included this one instead. It shows off my Gurgle Jug. I was so excited about this (the fish pitcher in the forefront). I had just seen them in a gift shop and thought they were really cute. Who knew my MIL would send me one!?? They are so fun. What did you have for dinner? We had ham, broccoli, carrots, cranberry salad, and twice baked potatoes with Bob's famous yeast rolls.

We hope your CHRISTmas day was wonderful and filled with the love of Christ. May your coming year be blessed.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

Love Ellie~