All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth

This year we celebrated Christmas at home in Kansas City, just the four of us and Kira, too. We had such a fun time starting our family traditions and just being together as a family.

On Christmas Eve we played around the house, made cookie dough, went to church, ate dinner and opened presents. For many years, my mom has made cheese stuffed pasta shells and mandarin orange salad for the Leitner family Christmas Eve dinner. This year was my chance to make it. I was really upset when I went to the grocery store the weekend before and didn't find jumbo shells. But my wonderful husband went to the "fancy" grocery store on Tuesday and bought a box. When I saw it, I told him that I regretted not telling him to buy two boxes because I was afraid too many of the shells would tear during production. In the end, I am very glad that he didn't buy two boxes because we had enough shells to feed a small army. We finally finished them today at lunch after eating them for the third lunch in a row!

No fancy table cloth for us this year - too much danger with a two year old running around! Poor Lyla, all she got was some gerber puffs!

We opened all of our family gifts after dinner. The first gift Steven opened was a battery powered Thomas train from Aunt Heather, Uncle Charley, Cousins Ava and Bridget. We immediately had to stop everything and put it together - all other presents for "Santa's Birthday Party" had to be put on hold. What a winner! So we let Lyla open her presents while Steven played with Thomas.

And not surprising, Lyla enjoyed the wrapping paper and boxes more than the actual presents. Why do we spend money?



Christmas morning we woke to more presents from Santa under the tree. What fun to continue the paper ripping and children squealing. Then it was off to playing in the snow, cookie baking and napping. Tommy was in charge of Christmas dinner which ended up really being our late meal as naps and playing forced us in to a stuffed shells leftover lunch (no complaining from me, though)!

Tommy is really coming in to his own in the chef department. He roasted a lamb, made a fancy potato dish with mushrooms and cherry tomatoes, and creamed peas. Cherry tomatoes, you say? - yes, they were from our crazily fruitful plant; we ended up freezing several bags to enjoy over the winter, yummy! Oh, by the way, I did eat the lamb - I am expanding my horizons and it was very delicious.
On Christmas night we settled the kids to bed and Tommy and I laid on the couch and watched a movie. Julie and Julia. It was really good and fed both of our recent fascinations - blogs and food! Over the weekend we even got to watch a few DVR'd episodes of West Wing during naps. What a great show, even 10 years later. We watched an episode where Josh got caught up in a blog about him, the deputy chief of staff. Tommy thought it was hilarious that they were talking about blogs on the West Wing - we probably didn't even understand what blogs were the first time we watched those shows.

What a wonderful Christmas weekend for the Clarks! Merry Christmas, everyone!

Oh, and the title of this entry ... maybe it should be "All Mommy wants for Christmas is Lyla's two front teeth." Poor little girl has spent Christmas cutting one of her top front teeth - nights have been long but she is going to make it through. Me on the other hand...