terrible phone pictures of christmas

I should just rename my blog 'terrible phone pictures of ___' and make things easier. We actually own a nice camera... it just never seems to go anywhere with us. Or when it does accompany us, like it did to Jane's Christmas pageant, it's inevitably out of batteries, or flashing some obscure F-stop message to me, or I have the wrong lens for the occasion. 

And so, to immortalize Jane's truly magnificent and epic performance, I have only these blurry, poorly lit iphone pictures. 

You'll just have to take my word for it. She went and told it from the mountain. She bore gifts from afar. She wished you a Merry Christmas. And I cried during Friendly Beasts like I always do. 

We made many cookies. Most of them were consumed in dough form. If my blog were a procedural crime show, this is when you would say 'zoom and enhance the upper right quadrant' and although nothing would happen, because it's a blurry iphone pic, you would still be able to see Benjamin conning what is surely more than his fair share of cookie dough. 

The other great dough stealer in this family has so mastered the craft that she actually augments her thefts with cinnamon and sugar. Her Nana might also be culpable in this specific incident. 

A Christmas morning stocking explosion. I think everyone in this picture has a piece of chocolate in 

their mouths.

This is one of the few pictures I have from Christmas morning and it shows Wren, back to a giant stack of unopened presents addressed to her, totally immersed in a book about dragons I got for 50 cents at Half Price Books. She's such a great kid.  I don't think she poked her head out of the book for more than 30 minutes all day. That and Settlers of Catan Junior were two of her favorite gifts. #nerdzz

I don't know about your family, but few people in my family actually eat any pie on Christmas. Or maybe just the tiniest sliver at like 7:30 at night instead of dinner. Pie is really sort of laying in provisions for the rest of the week. The next few days will consist of maybe opening a carton of yogurt for a child, shoving a bit of turkey into a crescent roll, and calling it dinner. At least that's how I roll. And pie is obviously breakfast, lunch, and an afternoon snack. 

And for all other meals there's check mix. I still need to do a roundup of the Christmas gifts we made, but it'll have to wait for the next episode of Thomas.