A Love Birds' Christmas 2011

I hope my readers had a wonderful Christmas! Despite having a sore ankle, ours was very chill and low key. Last year we were in VA visiting my parents, but this year we decided to stay home just us three and we LOVED it!

I had been brainstorming trying to figure out what to do for Christmas and knew that I didn't want to cook. While watching the Neelys on Food Network they were talking about a holiday menu of "little nibbles" so I suggested to Mr. Love Bird that we hit up Trader Joe's and get lots of yummy food to nibble on Christmas Day. We'd play Wii, watch movies and eat to our hearts' content all while staying in our PJs. He loved my idea and it was a simple plan to follow! Our "menu" consisted of mac & cheese balls, bibimbap bowls, chicken cilantro dumplings, pigs in a blanket, chicken sticks and molten chocolate cake with caramel swirl ice cream. It was heaven!

Nia and I were up at 7:30a.m. Skyping with my sisters then we fell back asleep and woke up around 12:30p.m. to open presents.

Here are a few highlights (please disregard the ashy knees - I had been down on the floor kneeling with Nia and didn't realize how badly I needed lotion! LOL!):

It took a minute for her to understand that she needed to rip open the paper!

Skyping with the family

Yes, we have become an Elmo household

We didn't capture any group shots or anything special since we were bumming it but seeing Nia's sheer excitement over her TWO Elmos was so fun (thanks mom and dad!).

The DSLR was the family gift, but our parents blessed us with some nice things: a gift card for Mr. Love Bird for clothes from his favorite store,  PJs, robe, footies and Bath & Body Works products for me (just what this mama needs!).

I really liked the way we did Christmas this year. Not sure if it will be a tradition as I can't see my parents not being ok with us not being there at least every other year so we'll see. For now I just feel blessed and thankful that we had a wonderful family day together!