Christmas, Christmas Time is Here ...

Christmas is always so much more entertaining with a baby in house! I have no idea what we did for holiday entertainment before Christian came along.

Christian enjoyed his presents, but they all paled in comparison to his stereo obsession. He loves to push all the buttons on the stereo and look at the lights. So ... really ... Mommy opened his presents and called him over to take a look.

He was particularly intrigued with an Elmo blanket that he got from his Cousin Rebecca. Christian loves Elmo. He stared at the blanket, reached for it, made cute high-pitched cooing noises at it.

We invited Liz and Terrill over for Christmas dinner. Jonathan did all the cooking and made mighty fine meal of spiral-cut ham, sweet potato casserole, procuitto-wrapped asparagus and biscuits. Yum!!

And for those of you wondering what kind of weather Phoenix gets for Christmas: it was a bit chilly and very rainy. "A bit chilly?" you ask. Yes, it was in the 50s. In looking at the nationwide weather map, it was pretty darn tootin' balmy here! :)

The evening ended with a $5.00 bet between Jonathan and me on who would win the Seinfeld Edition of Scene It. I won ... by a landslide. :)

All-in-all, a nice Christmas for the Lucero family. But I sure did miss being home in New Mexico!

Enjoy some videos of Christian! :)

T'was the Night Before Christmas ...

... and all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a scorpion.

What? A scorpion? Yep, we have scorpions out here ... but none are stirring. Thankfully!

Our day started with a grocery trip to Walmart. Usually not recommended on Christmas Eve, but everything was fine.
I tried to make biscochitos, but learned that there is a difference between "star anise" and "anise seed." I got star anise, and the receipe called for anise seed. So I crushed up the star anise in the VitaMix and did my best.

We weren't going to put up any Christmas decorations ... we've just been too busy. But I decided that wasn't going to do, so I found one of those rosemary Christmas trees at Lowe's and I put out luminarias last night.

I certainly miss a New Mexico Christmas with luminarias everywhere and snow (or at least realistic hopes of snow). Back in NM, there are luminarias everywhere ... houses, office buildings, strip malls, etc. But out here, I have only seen one home with luminarias. So I decded it was time to bring some NM tradition to our neighbhorhood.

We went to a nearby church for Christmas Eve services. We sat in the last row, just in case Christian got restless (which is inevitable these days). And once he got restless, we put him down and let him crawl around in the back. Jonathan stayed with him ... so he didn't hear much of the message. And I was distracted by wondering what my two men were doing that I didn't hear much of the message. Oh well ... we tried.

We got home, lit the luminarias and let Christian open one gift (a tradition in my family ... see the video below). After that, it was bathtime and bedtime for Christian.

Poor Bella hurt herself while I was taking this video. You can hear her yelp in the background.