Merry Christmas!!!
We celebrated Christmas Eve and Christmas at home- just us! We obviously missed our family and the old traditions, but we just hung out and ate and relaxed. Except Christmas Eve when Lily threw a MONSTER tantrum and REFUSED to wear her super cute Santa jammies and screamed and cried and kicked until we changed her. Pretend that all of the following pictures have her in adorable pink Santa pajamas.
She was excited to see what Santa brought...
But WAY more concerned about Dixie getting a treat...
and finding Circle the Elf.
Circle, chilling, by her stocking.
I love that Lily has the really nice, plush Pottery Barn stocking (clearance) and Hughes, Dixie, and I have the ones from Target that were $2 BEFORE I got them on clearance.
Most of our presents ended with- "Daddy, open this, please. "
BEST present of ALL: BUTTONS!!!!!!!!!!!!
The thing is...I TOTALLY knew this would be the hit present, which is why I was crouched down in front of her, ready. Hughes filmed the whole thing, too...PRECIOUS.
She danced around the living room for a few minutes, just clutching her treasure and grooving in happiness.
It was maybe longer than a few minutes.
The buttons were a really big deal.
Santa also brought her a Leap Pad, which cost about 90x the amount of the bag of buttons. Lily likes it...but it is going to have to grow on her. It is a cool toy, but Lily has apparently inherited the Apple gene and can just tell that this is not made by Apple. The iPod and our phones just work so much faster and better. But, we still have high hopes for the Leap Pad, once we figure it all out. It is pretty educational and has the Tag Reading System built in, so I am hoping she likes that part, too.
She also really liked these circle cotton balls in her stocking. Weirdo.
Oh, HEAVEN. We always had monkey bread growing up, and it is such a special memory. I can still picture the recipe paper (Mom, remember the stack of spiral papers in that cabinet under the phone?) and the taste. Yum. We don't have a Bundt pan, since our 1941 kitchen is tiny and we left ours in storage...and I am WAY too cheap and practical to buy a Bundt pan JUST to use at Christmas. So, I found this amazing recipe for Monkey Bread muffins. AAGGGHHH. It is SO easy, because it is just layering (biscuits, cinnamon, butter, sugar) and adding the secret ingredient at the end (condensed milk!!). You MUST make these. So yummy.
I am so thankful for Skype! And for hubbies who splurge and get their wives an iPad for Christmas!!! ;0
Merry Christmas. We sure missed you guys, but I can tell ya'll had a great time. I am taking back Lily's presents and buying her buttons too. :)
ReplyDeleteI do remember the recipes honey, I still have them. They can be your inheritence. You use to love to help make monkey bread.
Love you and love the pictures of Lily.
Love that girl and her buttons. And, I made the monkey bread-Yum!!
ReplyDeleteShe is so funny! I am now salivating over that monkey breads...yum. I am glad you guys had a lovely Christmas at home.
ReplyDeleteAnd Jeremy only naps like once a week, but I force at least an hour of quiet time - so he usually will just sit in bed with a book.
The stockings are really cute - but a ton of work. Melissa was over here earlier and I showed her. They come in kits and it is like sew by number. I think you can find them at any Michael's type store. My mom bought me four back when I was pregnant. She made ours when we were all kids, so I kinda had to do it - but I am super glad I did.
Love you!!
excited about the monkey muffins!! totally going to make those over the break
ReplyDeletecan i just say Lily always makes me smile?! She is just so so fun!! I am a horrible mom and still haven't set up molly's leappad so i don't even know if she likes it yet. you will love your ipad, dont let lily start playing with it or it will become hers! i pretty much cant use mine around molly or she starts freaking out and saying "game! game!" because she has a bunch of games on it.
ReplyDeleteto comment on what jeannie above said about stockings - i think she is talking about the bucilla stockings. they are super cute but are HELL to make. i bought one to make molly and i opened the packaged and there are seriously over 200 steps. you have to individually cut out every piece of felt and hand sew it, along with sequins, onto the stocking. i got it when i was pregnant and needless to say there are about 2 peppermints sewn on the damn thing and it's still sitting in a drawer. i have great respect for anyone who finishes one of those!! they are awesome, though.
gotta make that monkey bread. yum. have you ever made gorilla bread? it's just like monkey bread but you wrap the biscuit pieces around little pieces of cream cheese. it's heaven on earth!