Christmas Day

We had a nice, relaxing, lazy Christmas with just our little family of four this year. Campbell woke up at 5:30, which means I got up then, as well, to keep him away from what Santa had left until the rest of the family was up. He helped me make pigs-in-a-blanket while we awaited the others. Helene came downstairs at about 5:45, so I sent her up to wake up Daddy. John is usually the first one up, but he was on call and worked late on Christmas Eve. So, we finally got everyone downstairs before 6:00am, but John decided to torture the children a little more by telling them they had to do a happy Christmas dance first:

We tried to do everything kind of simple and small-scale this year. The kids seemed to enjoy their gifts. And, as always, the boxes and bows are almost as much fun to play with as the gifts inside:

I snapped this picture mid-morning because we were looking at the hundreds of birds that landed in the cottonwood. I posted it here because it shows what kind of weather we had for Christmas Day. It hasn't snowed in several days, but there's still some snow left on the ground. This was the warmest day we had had for a few weeks; it got up to about 45 in the afternoon. The sky was blue and the sun was warm enough that we enjoyed sitting out on our deck mid-morning, drinking coffee and reading new books, while the kids ran around in the green space and got some fresh air.

This is me peeling apples and Helene eating the peelings:

I had so much fun making this pie. It's from a Southern Living recipe that I saw before Thanksgiving and had been wanting to try. It calls for 4 1/2 pounds of apples! It's a balancing act trying to pile all of those apples on.

Here's our Christmas spread, which the children found to be suspiciously like a Thanksgiving spread. Helene is in the background with a plastic rose in her teeth. She thought I was taking a picture of her. We had turkey, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, stuffing/dressing, rolls, and gravy. It was all wonderful, and we should be eating the leftovers for days. We used the Christmas china. I think it was the fanciest meal we've ever had with just the four of us.

John prepared a delicious herbed roasted turkey.

The pie baked down some, but was still huge. And yummy. The crust was wonderful and not too hard to make. I highly recommend this recipe. (I did not do the sauce that the recipe mentions, just the cornmeal crust and double apple pie.)