Hooray Christmas!

Oh my word. I love Blogger. I wrote this and took a million hours uploading all the photos only to accidentally delete it (a second time!!)... but just now while writing it a third time I realized it was saving and so I rummaged around and found this as a draft! It's a Christmas miracle!!! Haha!! 

This Christmas was about 4,527x's better than it was last year, thankfully! Nothing bad happened last year, but nothing good either. It just. Was.  

This year we actually got out of the house and made it to the squadron party, so here's a more recent photo of Chris and I:

Gah, the difference between 24 and 30 is crazy. Haha..

We  made friends of ours come over and celebrate in Christmas morning. (But it wasn't hard to twist their arms, haha...) It makes our hearth much more cheerful!

I made all the stockings. Ours (Chris's, mine and J's) are from two years ago (here).

This year I crocheted one, and sewed three. Charla's was bright rainbow, Melissa's was Nepali inspired and Zak's was pray painted with a stormtrooper snowflake! Brenda's was really fun though, it was a black & white fabric I picked up at the craft store and colored with a set of markers I have laying around. I looooove it!

   

Is it weird to not do Santa but still do stockings? I really do love that tradition, so I doubt we will give it up!!

There are snowflakes all over the house, thanks to Zak and Erin! 

Our tree, in all it's gaudy tinseled glory:

The required Annalee elf (and Hans Solo!)..

This year I took the New England maple syrup my grandparents sent me and made maple sugar candy for the first time!! It was awesome, and just like the stuff we buy in New Hamoshire. Super life changing now that I know I can have it anywhere at any time! ;D

I also made vegan pumpkin cinnamon rolls morning of. With LOTS of icing.

We really cut back on gifts this year, and Johnny got good stuff. Like stocking booty... really, this kid was so thrilled to find a banana in his stocking!

A rad robot sweater from the Lalas!

German cookies... This was his 'want' gift. He's too young to tell me what he wants, but he asks for cookies first thing when he wakes up and about 65,000 times after that throughout the day. So it was a no-brainer. They came in a cool Hansel and Gretal tin that he will love playing with when they are finished, too.

Happy kid.

With one of the Lalas, passing out gifts.

And the big one. A wooden excavator that his dad made. A-freakin-mazing! He hasn't stopped playing with it and has asked to take it to bed, in the car and in the shower with him. He adores it, like whoa.

To top the day off (after a delicious Neatloaf Night) Melissa made us REAL Glühwein, flaming rum sugar and all!

Sigh.... It was a good last Christmas in Germany (sniff...sniff...). I love being surrounded by amazing people who help us make such nice memories!