Scenes from a Christmas Vacation

Welcome back friends! Or should I say, welcome back ME! It has been a lovely {+ sometimes not}, relaxing {+not}, productive {+ not}, eventful{ + not} and sometimes long {...but mostly not long enough}week! I feel I would be remiss to not catch up on our holiday week, even though I'm sure that by now, everyone is feeling pretty set on the holidays!
::: some Christmas Eve...and a certain little boy's First Christmas! :::

::: Christmas Morning :::

::: Oh, and we got some snow in these parts...SOME, being the understatement of the century! :::

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You weren't likely to find this girl out in that snow for long; instead I opted to hang indoors with the Baby Liamb, trying out some recipes from the new Vegan cookbooks Santa brought me, being inspired by some cool Vegan recipe type blogs and not doing professor like duties such as reading papers + grading. We spent New Years Eve with friends at a couple of "child friendly" open house's {aka, no sitter required}. While we didn't hang out quite late enough to ring in the New Year with them, it was still a lovely night...although it paled in comparison to our fabulous New Years Morning breakfast...complete with mimosas + the most delish vegan pancakes I've ever had! I'm just sayin'. We hosted an impromptu get together with friends New Years Day and finished off the weekend at my parent's annual New Year shinding. This monday morning, while the Christmas trees are not down yet + the new toys are only about half put away, the children will be back to school, my "ward" will be back over at my house while her mom returns to work and I will be back to preparing lectures + the like for the class I will be teaching this semester. {Ok, I probably won't be doing that professor part today... but still.} And you know, it's all good. In some ways, I think the best gift I could have received this year was the snow storm that kept us all together at home, playing with toys for a few days without interruption. We don't often have 3 days to do such things without some interruption + after all the busy-ness of the holidays, well, I can't think of anything that we needed or wanted more. Even still, no one would have complained about a few extra days of vacation! Hoping everyone had a wonderful holiday week! Huzzah 2011!
xo.