Our Christmases Continued

So, my scheme to guilt-trip my sister into sending me the photos of Christmas by mentioning it on the blog totally worked and now I have some photos to share! Ha ha! But, if you know my family and its get-togethers at all you know that some of the best photos I had to omit for... content, so the photos I have are mostly just of us and the Blackards. Just know that, despite a few speed bumps, Christmas Eve was for the most part fun and we had a good time. (How's that for a qualified statement?!)

My mom wasn't feeling so hot this year and so didn't get around to decorating the tree before Christmas Eve arrived. I wasn't about to risk making myself sick by getting near that sucker so Melanie and I strongarmed the boys into taking up the task. They really were not as excited about it as this picture makes it appear...



Mel and I made dinner and Robert and Wade cleaned up. A very nice system in my opinion. :o) But we wouldn't have survived the night without our Square Cow Coolers!



I cannot for the life of me recall what Robert has in his hand here (and no, not because of all the Square Cow Coolers) but I liked the Christmas tree-ness of my ensemble so up the photo goes.



The table in all its glory:


Place cards:



Quiggles! Garfunkel stayed at our place for the evening to avoid the mishaps of last year's Christmas Eve (let me just say that Funk doesn't mix well with children who insist on chasing him around and poking him) so Quigs hung out between me and my dad during dinner (to avoid the same child and the same poking).



Modeling our fabulous chapeaus (Mel's is a snowman and mine is a reindeer. Too bad you can't see'em):



Remember the very mysterious cranberry bread post from a few weeks back? Well, Robert FINALLY got his loaf on this, his 14th Kimball Christmas. Woohoo!!!

(No, I'm not affiliated with the West Side - that's a 4.)

And he was very, very, very happy:

Every year, I make the much-beloved Boston Cream Pie. This year, my top layer broke apart and the custard layer on which it sat was not conducive to keeping it from drifting apart like the continents. *sigh* So here is my cake, complete with butt cracks. (The peppermint plate is mine, though, and it's still awesome!):



But I heard it still tasted pretty good: