Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas! We are fortunate enough to have my parents here as well as my brother G. My sister L arrived from Boston this afternoon, in time for turkey dinner. The kids always love seeing their Aunts and Uncles, particularly those they don't see very often. G lives in Alaska so we are lucky to see him every 1-1 1/2 years, and most of the time it is a little longer. I am thrilled that they could make it here this year.

Yesterday my lovely wife was on-call so she was at the hospital for a 24 hour shift. The kids and I visited her for a Christmas Eve meal of, well, pizza, but at least we got to have a little family time. Last night, of course, Santa had to arrive, so before I went to bed I had to "take care of a few things." One of the things I did was get out the tripod and the camera and try to take a few pictures of the Christmas tree using only the light from the tree. I was just trying to see whether or not I could get a good shot of the tree with the pictures under it. This one seems to have come out okay (after my dear wife did some work with it).

The kids were very excited about Christmas this year. Apparently DD and DS#3 were up and waking their grandparents at 4:00 AM. I know that DS#3 was up before 5 because he came to my room and I had him changed and back in bed with me to try to get him back to sleep at 5:00. He did go back to sleep and was able to sleep until a little after 7:00 AM. My dear wife got back home by about 7:30 and then the kids were all ready to tear into their presents.

Everyone had a great time, but DS#3 certainly had enough excitement today to end up taking a rare nap. Here he is after he climbed up on his Grandpa to be rocked for a while. Grandpa "ate it up."

Tomorrow should be a fun, though busy day, including a trip to the Riverwalk.