The best Christmas ever...

Christmas Eve was the greatest. It was wonderful to have everyone together. Good food in the Gallery and opening presents, many of them made by the giver. Sam and Stu and thier families slept overnight, or at least stayed...along with Cass they were all up until about 3 a.m. It has been a long time since Santa visited our house. Malachi jumped on our bed in the morning and shouted "Grammy, Santa brought me a train, come see my train!"

Dax and Cabe opening their jammies.

Malachi was happy with the first thing he opened, Grace just wanted to open more presents...she didn't care who they were for.

Mini Santa.

I bought this puppet theatre before I had any grandchildren.

Mike gave each of the kids a painting of my dad saddling Rio.

Each painting represents a season of the year.Mike plays Santa for some neighbor families.

Val is making sure he passes the tummy test...no extra padding required.

The Gallery

This last year, Mike has become quite a prolific painter. He has this pitiful "studio" in the basement but he has been turning out paintings like a man possessed. I have a room that I didn't quite know what to do with---a dining room, a library? I started hanging art on the walls and it became The Gallery. After we hung all the paintings I thought we needed something 3 dimensional so I headed to C.G.Sparks (where else?) and bought Mike an African ladder for Father's Day. Last month we set up tables and had Stu's birthday dinner in there but mostly it is a pretty room to do yoga. I have my eye on a cream leather daybed that would make a nice place to relax...someday. Thanks to Sonny, my father-in-law for the trunk--he saw it at a garage sale and thought "Leslie has to have this!"

Silly Mammy...

I was having a Christmas-y day with Grace today. We weren't exactly baking cookies but she was playing with the nativity scene in the office and I was making some new Christmas stockings. Every once in awhile she would wander into the kitchen with me and watch 101 Dalmations, then she would go back to the office and suddenly I realized it was very quiet. I surprised her in the act of decorating my office furniture with two bottles of "white-out" she found in the bin under the printer. I have only myself to blame because she painted the printer stand with it last week while I was in the room, but I was compulsively blogging and didn't notice right away. Of course, she got in trouble and she was a very sad girl while sitting on what is now the time out chair, watching me scrape off her artwork.

The "white-out" is now safely stored in the top drawer of the credenza and in case anyone was wondering, it does come off shutters, drop-leaf tables, laptops and the mouse, and printer stands. However, it cannot be removed from walls. I bent down to kiss her tear-streaked face and she looked up at me with her big blue eyes and said, "I missed you, Mammy." We should all be like a two year old and forget offenses in five minutes or less.

Merry Christmas to all.

Jingle Bells

Grace and Malachi learned a Christmas song this week. We are now in a countdown to Christmas. Malachi wants a train and Grace wants a baby doll...we are back in the 50's and it is all good. They both said they would sit on Santa's lap this year---we will see!

This is a fun game Daxton plays with his daddy. He gets a mischievous grin and falls backward when Sam stands by the bed.