Christmas Day

Every year since we have been married (and even when we were engaged), we have spent Christmas at either my family's or Brian's family's home. This year, we decided to stay in town for Christmas day before heading out of town to see our families. We had a great time celebrating with the girls all day. Although we don't get the girls gifts (they get plenty and don't need anything extra from us!), they did have some gifts from family friends and Auntie Tracy and Uncle Rick that they got to open.

Cora getting ready to open her first present

Disa getting the hang of tearing the paper off

Cora checking out the neat (and perfect for houses with small children) flameless electric candle we got from one of Brian's coworkers

Brian was pretty excited about getting his 80gb external hard drive

Cora helping hand out gifts

For those of you that know me and my handyman tendencies, you will realize that this pink tool set was perfect for me!

We saved the biggest gift for last. The girls had been looking at it for a few weeks so they were excited to get there hands on it!

That large gift box contained an art easel! One side has a marker board and paper and the other side is a chalkboard. This is a picture of the initial steps of putting the easel together.

Little helper #1

Little Helper #2

Cora painting with her new paint pens. She and Disa LOVE it!

After a great day, we finished things off with a delicious dinner of short braised ribs and German potato salad. I know Brian didn't believe the meat would turn out very good when I boiled it in water for 2.5 hours. But it was SO good that we have decided to make it our annual Christmas dinner.

After the girls went to bed and I was packing for our trip, Brian let me know that his parents had agreed to watch the girls for a few nights and we were going to go away for a few days! What a perfect way to end the day. :)