A Quiet Christmas

This Christmas season has been a busy one, but not necessarily busy celebrating the birth of our Savior unfortunately.  We have been distracted by our big bathroom/nursery/laundry room remodel.  In fact, our bathroom tiler stayed at our house tiling until 10pm on Christmas Eve eve.  I felt really bad about that and tried slipping him drinks and plates full of food to make up for it.  Let me just state that he stayed on his own free will (although that doesn't make me feel any better).  The workers thankfully didn't work on Christmas Eve or Christmas day so it turned out to be a nice, quiet holiday. We had a perfect Christmas Eve dinner with Matt's cousin and his girlfriend, Wade and Hannah. I served a non-traditional tri-tip dinner, per Matt's request of course, and was able to dress up the meal with a delicious mushroom and chèvre cheese tart and traditional scalloped potatoes.  I should have taken a picture of that meal so I could repeat it every Christmas from here on out.  Hannah brought her juicer and squeezed up some delicious drink concoctions.  It was a healthy and pretty accompaniment to a yummy meal.  We ended the night with a few games of Rummikub.  We spent Christmas day alone as a little family.  Although I prefer large family gatherings for holidays, I really enjoyed having a quiet Christmas with my boys.  I doubt Christmas will ever be that quiet again.  Christmas morning was the typical feel good, eat breakfast, listen to Christmas music, and open presents event.  Matt was slightly disappointed that I actually took him seriously when he asked me multiple time prior to Christmas, "We aren't getting each other presents, right?".  Apparently I shouldn't have taken him seriously.  It was all part of his way of surprising me in a big way on Christmas day.  He came to me with a brand new fancy washer and dryer.  So it was an epic fail on my part.  I'll never believe him again when he tells me not to give gifts.  Lastly, we headed to the park to try and fly kites. We failed at getting the kites up.  Is it possible that it was too windy to fly a kite?  I'll never forget Matt's frustration, and me dying of laughter watching him, as he tried getting our kites to fly.  Neither one would fly and both saw their end as they plummeted full speed to the ground and then got swept away full force into the fences.  We dumped them in the trash on our way out.  It was hilarious!  All in all, it was a great Christmas.  I wasn't good about taking pictures this year since we were in the midst of so much construction in our home.  Here are a few of my blurry mobile uploads.