9:30AM Christmas...

Ahhhh, Christmas morning. I remember the days of yore when I was a wee tyke and thought I could hear Santie's sleigh bells on my roof, and I would wake up every 15 minutes throughout the night to see if my alarm clock was illuminating the wonderful numbers of 5:00AM, a time that was early but not too early to wake up my siblings and my parents and levitate to the family room to discover what the red suited man had brought me.

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Yeah, 9:30AM was too early this year. Dean and I would have slept in until 3PM if the sun wasn't so bright. We do love our sleep. We moseyed out of bed, put on our new pajama pants, and drug ourselves downstairs to see what we had given eachother in our stockings.

Our 2 adorable stockings are over on the couch filled with deliciousness.

We just opened our last door on our little Big Lots chocolate advent calendars. Dean and I both had those growing up so we decided we are still going to get them every Christmas, and continue on with the tradition with our kids when we have them.

We only have a couple of pictures from the presents we received on Christmas because we were too busy ripping off wrapping paper and didn't think to take pictures of every present. But we were spoiled by eachother and our loved ones. My mom got us a gift card to WalMart which is wonderful. I will take a Walmart gift card any day of the year because I somehow manage to go there at least 2 times per week. Dean's mom got us a sweet digital picture frame that holds up to 2,000 pictures.

DEAN GOT ME THE DIGITAL KEYCHAIN I WAS DYING FOR!!!!!!! Chelsey was wonderful and suprised me by getting me a digi keychain so now I can have double the fun! Chels, you rock the casbah sistah!




I went to a used bookstore and bought all of the books in the Wheel of Time series that I could get my hands on. It's a series by author Robert Jordan that Dean LOVES so he was like a kid in a candy store while opening them up. I still have a few more to get him to complete the series but that will come in due time.

Adam and Lisa somehow read our minds and know exactly what we would love. Dean got a Nerf Dart gun from them, and he LOVE LOVE LOVES it! Now he tries to turn the Nintendo on from across the room by shooting the power button with his Nerf gun. He shoots the clock. He shoots our pictures. He shoots the windows. He shoots the tv. He shoots the wall. He shoots the ...you get the idea. Point being, he loves it.

And Adam and Lisa managed to find the worlds most perfect puzzle for me. Not too many pieces. It's not a realistic landscape. It doesn't have 2 sides to the pieces. It is EXACTLY the type that I love. Thank you guys! We love and miss you!

Dean hid his final present on the tree inside a silver ball ornament that opens up, and told me that I had one more present when I thought I was all done. I found where it was and he was wonderful and got me a necklace and earrings set that I had been wanting. What a sweet man.

Then on to the most delicious part of the day. The dean and chelle Christmas dinner tradition is a Raclette dinner. Now, for anyone who doesn't know what Raclette is, let alone hasn't tasted it, I truly feel sorry for you. It is a cheese packaged directly in heaven, and sent to your local grocery store. You buy a Raclette oven, in the picture it's the black double layered contraption with the red on the sides, and it has 4 triangle metal trays that you put on the bottom level to melt the cheese. And while you're waiting for the cheese to melt, you can put artichoke hearts (my personal favorite), sausage, baby corn, shrimp, etc. on the top level which is kind of like a griddle. Once the cheese is melted you pour it over a half of a red potato and put the other sides with it and it is divine. The cheese is crazy expensive but by golly, it is worth its weight in gold.

Mmmmmmmm. Great, now I'm craving it again.

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We had a wonderful quiet Christmas, the first one we have had by ourselves since we've known eachother. We opened presents, took a nap, watched tv, talked to family and friends on the phone, ate the most wonderful meal known to man together, and spent all day being grateful that we have eachother.