I want a hippopatomus for Christmas

I love holidays in our family. Everyone gets along and there's relatively little drama. Thus, we spent Christmas eating, drinking, opening presents, watching A Christmas Story as many times as possible, playing games and enjoying being together. While it makes for a wonderful weekend, it doesn't necessarily make for an exciting blog post. Here are a few tid bits, anyway.

We spent Christmas day with Heath's family. Ben was more into ripping open presents than even three months ago on his birthday. That was fun to watch. Obviously he doesn't "get" the idea of Christmas yet, but he loved playing with all his new toys. I thought we could get him to play elf and hand everyone their presents, but that wasn't happening. Maybe next year. He also really warmed up to his Uncle Chad. Chad lives in Colorado, so Ben's only seen him a few times. However, Chad really made it his mission to get on Ben's good list, dishing out as much tickling, rough-housing and as many silly faces as Ben could handle. By the end of the day they were buddies. My brothers and I don't have much extended family we're close to, so I don't know what it's like to grow up with uncles, aunts and cousins around. It really means a lot to me that Chad took the time to get to know Ben while he had the chance. I'm excited for Ben to grow up in a close-knit family.

On December 26, my parents, brother and sister-in-law came to our house for Christmas. It was our first time hosting a major holiday. Nothing was burned and nobody suffered food poisoning so I considered it a success. I also got to pull a classic childhood prank on Ian. For various reasons, this year we decided not to exchange presents with my side of the family. Ian was sort of the impetus for that, so we got a big box and wrapped up some raisins for him. At least this time I didn't trick him into buying me a real present. And the raisins were chocolate covered.

So our Christmas was everything a great Christmas should be: delicious, warm and filled with laughter. I always forget to take pictures while we're in the middle of things, but Heath got me a sweet new digital camera, so hopefully that will change.

Happy New Year, everyone!