It's good to warm my bones beside the fire

Which is exactly what I'm doing.  The new house has this monstrous old wood stove that pumps out enough heat to warm most of the main floor.  It smells cozy, it feels warm, there is even a hound asleep in front of it.  It's Christmas day and, as we have for the past few years, we've managed to have a relatively low-key day, which is in stark contrast to the last month.  Let's review with pictures, shall we?

Zeni "celebrates Him".  And no, her pants did not fall down, praise the lord. 

Zeni was in her school's religiously themed Christmas pagent.  There was praising and baby jesus rocking and she LOVED it.  I survived, and actually got into it by the end.  Jeremy loved it and said it reminded him of his childhood, and Hayden played iphone games through the entire thing until it was time to get a cookie and then he decided to participate.  My mom, who has been here since the 9th, loved it too (or at least played the good grandma and smiled through the whole thing) and managed not to point out how ridiculous I was being when I insisted that we all show up 45 minutes early to get a good seat.

Our beautiful front window, before the boxes arrived..

....and the family room after.

The Pageant was the night before we moved.  I'm not sure why, but I failed to anticipate the whole UNpacking part of the move.  Whatever parts of the packing we didn't get done (and there were many) were taken care of by the movers, which was lovely.  But then, there were just boxes.  And boxes and boxes

and boxes and boxes full of crap that had to be sorted and put away.  Neither Jeremy nor I are partial to clutter so the first few days in the new pad were, let's say, tense.  Once we moved the couch so that one could get into the fridge things started looking up.

Despite the fact that the house was one huge clutter heap I *needed* (yes, that's right all you starving people out there, *needed*) a Christmas Tree.  There was no way Jeremy was going to have any part in bringing anything else into the house, but once I hauled it home and set it up even he had to admit that it was lovely.

Somewhere in here Hayden had his first piano recital.  My parents, brother and uncle are all now or have been professional musicians - I had high hopes for his musical aptitude.  He dinked out "Jingle Bells" painfully slowly and then rocked out on Hark the Herald Angels sing and given that he's only had six lessons I'm going to say he did respectably.  I'll spare you the video but be assured that I winced through the entire first piece.  Despite the long pauses, missed notes and painful replaying of one stanza over and over (and over) he got up there with no nerves, bowed nicely and fist pumped when it was over, so we are going to call it a win.  (That's Hayden's piano teacher in the background - "Mr. Bill".  The man is awesome, has a house filled with motion activated Christmas paraphernalia and 2 Steinway grands, and on the day of the recital he and his wife were wearing matching shirts.  I love Spokane!)

Einstien loved his purple sweater - can't you tell?

My dad arrived a few days before Christmas and we had a great time with my parents.  Since we moved to Spokane we have had the same Christmas tradition - prezzies in the morning, homemade cinnamon rolls to follow and then a nap.  The afternoon is taken up by a hike and then a drive through Spokane to spot the gaudiest neon-lit Chinese restaurant we can find, where we stop and have dinner.  We weren't sure how having my folks here would change things but as it turns out they only made everything better!  They loved watching the kids open presents, didn't say anything about the fact that my cinnamon rolls some how deflated overnight in the fridge, and my dad especially appreciated the nap part of the day.  Hayden and Zeni insisted on bringing their new bow and arrows on the walk to hunt squirrels (holy shit what kind of children am I raising!?):

 Dinner was better than usual - although China Garden did not boast as much neon as we usually look for, and there was no spinning dragon sign, the food was almost edible which is a huge win for Spokane.

Post-surgery holiday eating has gone pretty well - I am still not (ever) hungry which is great but my weight loss has plateaued 10 pounds away from my first goal which is super frustrating and I think may bizarrely be because I am not eating ENOUGH calories.  Working on it.  I threw up for the first time from eating something (tmi?) apparently meatballs and my stomach are no longer friends, so that's nice.

Happy Holidays from me, Jeremy Zeni Hayden and my dad's mitten.