More Pics from Christmas Day

Christmas Day with Shelly and Laurie!

Spent a great day with our friends Shelly and Laurie (Shelly is my long lost sister... lol) They are great people and wonderful hosts. We've been lucky to invited as part of the family for three years. Here are a few pictures from the day.

Even the dogs are tired!

Awwwww!

Turkey time

Well the day went pretty well until about 5 when the girls reached their "best before date"... The combo of sugar, gifts and excitement ended up with a short circuit of fuses. But all and all it was a wonderful day, Dana made a tasty turkey and I made stuffing, gravy and the potatoes. I usually make sweet potatoes with brown sugar and butter in the oven, but this year Dana added marshmallows... Jessica and I LOVED them. It was like the most prefect fire toasted marshmallows matched with our favorite sweet potatoes. Yeah, we'll be doing that again!

This year in our Christmas Crackers (see definition below - for those who don't know what they are) Dana receieved the gift of a large paper clip - which seemed to be the item to trade until I received the bowling game - who doesn't want to bowl at the dinner table?










From wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_cracker
Christmas crackers or bon-bons are an integral part of Christmas celebrations in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa and other Commonwealth countries as well as countries of the former Soviet Union (where it is called "хлопушка"). A cracker consists of a cardboard tube wrapped in a brightly decorated twist of paper, making it resemble an oversized sweet-wrapper. The cracker is pulled by two people, and, much in the manner of a wishbone, the cracker splits unevenly. The split is accompanied by a small bang produced by the effect of friction on a chemically impregnated card strip (similar to that used in a cap gun).

Our Christmas Day (December 24th)

After finishing up the wrapping of gifts, we finally went to bed at 2am, and were woken by the girls ready to begin Christmas at 7:48am. After impatiently waiting for the adults to wake up, the opening began! The girls enjoyed their gifts and it was fun to watch them finally figure out what was in the gifts that they were shaking for so long. Of course the big hit (and I do mean hit) were the nerf guns supplied by the James Family... Dana thought it wise to draft a set of rules before the girls opened fire and had them sign the release of weapons in the case of face shooting ("you're gonna shoot your eye out" was ringing in my ears) and absolutely no four legged furry dog targets! So far no one has lost an eye and there has been a lot of laughing and declarations of war!

Included in the gifts the girls received were:
Books
Cross Country Skis
Triops (the Monkey Fish - this is totally between Dana and Jessica)
Littlest Petshop
CSI dvd game
Moxie girls (sadly there was not a Moxie car to be found in the city of Regina)
XBox game and controller (so we all can play together)
A blanket making kit (which the girls worked on right away - love things that keep them busy!)