62. December 25th, 2010 Picture.

 [NOTE: For some reason, Blogger has had issues, and this post was lost somehow.  I am reposting it, but I think all the comments were lost.  Thankfully I have all my posts emailed to me, so the entire post wasn't completely lost!]

Nothing like a great Christmas post in May, right?  Isn't that how the old saying goes?  No?  Okay, cool.  Let's recap it anyway!  

Christmas is always chaotic, there are so many people in my family, so many guests, children, presents, last minute gift panics, glasses of wine, bottles of beer, more glasses of wine and lots of shrimp, it's impossible for the day to not fly by.  

It started bright an early when Eddie, Christine, Cassie and Abigail came to open stockings.  We are a big stocking family, so it's tradition we always wake up and open them together.  Eddie and Christine alternate spending Christmas with us and her family, and since they were at my mom's house this year for Thanksgiving, they'd be spending Christmas afternoon with Christine's family.  We still obviously needed to see them, open stockings, presents and have breakfast, so they came over super early in their PJs so we could spend Christmas morning together.

{Me and my cutie pies, all decked out in our comfy, cozy pajamas!  Check out Cassie's lime green hair, she tried to convince me that her mom let her dye it, I totally played along.}

{The super awesome sparkily eye shades that caused pandemonium.}

{Check out my sweet Glee fleece pants!  They were from the girls and they are totally awesome.  Pair it with my Glee t-shirt and I am officially all Gleeked out!}

{And Abby wants the eye shades!  But look at her cute little face, it's impossible to say no.}

{By far one of the best Christmas gifts I got was a stamp from my mom.  She knows how much I love cookbooks, food, cooking and The Food Network, etc, so she got me this adorable personalized stamp.  I love it!  I went around stamping everything I could find, random scraps of paper, paper towels, back of wrapping paper, and my Ina Garten cookbook, which is what you see here.  I love that I can stamp an envelope, recipe card, wrapping paper, part of a gift, wine tag, or pretty much anything I want - the possibilities are endless!  It's so so so so so perfect.}

Once all the commotion died down from the first round of Christmas, my mom and I got going on producing the second portion.  We had to clean up all the breakfast items, wash all the champagne glasses, and get all the food in the oven for round two!  I was in charge of the cheese tray, I always claim this as 'mine', so I assembled all my hard cheeses on a platter with crackers, honey, cranberries, fig jam, nuts, mmm fig jam, then got down to making my baked brie.  I'd bought some puff pastry at Trader Joe's, along with a mini wheel of brie.  I cut off portions of the rind, to allow for the cheese to ooze, because who doesn't love gooey cheese?  I covered the top of the brie with brown sugar and honey and wrapped it in the puff pastry.  I had some left over pieces and decided to try a little decorative flair with the hearts.  I think it looks pretty good!  The I popped it in the oven for about a half hour until it got all brown and flaky and gooey and now I'm hungry.

Everyone started arriving, my sister Kate, her husband and two teenage girls, my brother Ronny, his wife and their two children, Cameron and Chloe, my cousin Susan and my Uncle Paul, phew it was QUITE the full house!  The kids went off to watch Christmas movies on TV, while the adults kicked back, relaxed, ate and drank.  I was on my bestest behavior, not wanting to pull another Thanksgiving episode where I drank a wee bit too much champagne, which pleased no one, especially me the next morning.

We spent all day just laughing, telling stories and enjoying eachother's company.  Our phone rang no less than 1 million times, each with a different family member, friend or neighbor wishing us a Merry Christmas, my mom is pretty popular, but I'm sure you all knew that already.

My sister had to leave on the early side, she'd worked the night before, she's a nurse, so she was absolutely wiped out.  I don't blame her!  We quickly exchanged gifts with her, Harry, Devon and Amanda [the recipient of the awesome slippers], and she gave me the OTHER 'best gift of the year'.  A KINDLE!

It was the biggest hit I've ever seen.  The Kindle won Christmas. [Ratty's KichenAid mixer won Christmas Eve, don't worry!]  No one could get over how tiny it was, how thin, and forget about the fact that it could hold thousands of books, plugs right into your computer AND has a battery life of a month.  A MONTH!  Nothing lasts a month anymore, not even a bottle of shampoo!  It was an absolutely epic gift!

Once Katie left, the party continued for a few more hours, with everyone opening their gifts.  Since there were so many of us, we let the kids tear into their first, they have the attention spans of fruit flies, and then the adults went around and opened their gifts one at time, so everyone else could admire what they received.  The funniest gift of the night was a pink tool belt Katie got my mom.  My mom is always fixing things around the house, we joke that she is the super, so they thought it would be hilarious to get her a tool belt she could wear around.  It was a huge hit, obviously.

We called it a night at a pretty decent time, we all needed our beauty sleep to rest up for ANOTHER Christmas party the next day, the Annual Downey's Family Christmas Party, which is always pure insanity.  You'll see!  I hope everyone had a nice Christmas, you know, 5 months ago!