I’m struggling with Christmas this year. It seems each year I like Christmas a little bit less. Not the season – I love the season with everyone being merry and jolly. It is the actual day of Christmas that I struggle with. I dislike it. The pressure and consumerism…it bothers me more every year. I adore spending the week up north with our family. It is really amazing. I love getting a bit of alone time with Steve in the place where we spent our magical first couple of years together falling in love (I know, I know – but we are schmoopies like that). It is fantastic that we get to spend the week of Christmas kind of suspended from our normal lives. Watching the girls surrounded by aunts and uncles and grandparents and cousins is fabulous. If I could just remove December 25th from the mix, it would be perfect.

Enough of my being grinchy. You come to see the girlies. I haven’t had my camera out much. In fact, my mom was here for 5 days at Thanksgiving and I didn’t take a single photo. Life is moving along. The %$#@ elf showed up again this year. His hi-jinks are definitely petering out. I’ll be glad for him to return to the North Pole. We’ve watched our favorite Christmas movies and cartoons. We baked cookies on a “snow” day and took them to some neighbors. My girlfriends and I had an ugly sweater party. I won. It was really hideous. Homemade is the key to a really bad holiday sweater. Sabrina finally lost her front tooth after months of it hanging loose. These 2 phone photos as all I have to offer.