How we spent Christmas

We hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas!  Christmas Eve was great here -- we had a nice afternoon outing to the mall in Lewisville, a new destination for us, so I could get my hair cut for the first time since March.  Chris's girlfriend Stefani's younger sister works at a salon there, so I thought it would be nice to try going over there.  She was great and I love the haircut!  Stefani happened to be there at the same time, and we visited some and she got to hold the baby when Mike came back from strolling around the mall with him.  We had lunch in the food court and I fed the baby while we were there -- hey, everyone else is eating in the food court, why can't babies? :)  As I read from one mom's post on a breastfeeding resource website, people are more apt to notice a screaming baby than a quiet nursing one, anyway, all things being equal.  It worked out well for being my first time doing that in public -- nursing top helped a lot.  Then in the evening we watched the Hawaii Bowl and were pumped to see Jimmy Clausen return to early season form as the Irish demolished Hawaii.  At 10 we left to go to midnight mass at St. Thomas Aquinas in east Dallas.  It was the only mass around here actually at midnight, and they had a wonderful choir for a carol service at 11 prior to mass.  We sat way off to the side so I could feed Michael during the carol service (no narthex or cry room there) and then he slept peacefully through church, which was great.

Christmas morning we thought we would do presents early, but this is how we spent the whole morning with our hungry baby (are you sensing a common theme to our days here??):

[caption id="attachment_494" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="All I want for Christmas is milk"][/caption]

So Mike opened all his presents first, and then I opened mine one-handed.  Our families and friends were very generous to us (and the baby!) and we are very thankful!  We talked to both families on Skype during the day when Michael was awake, had a Christmas movie marathon throughout the day (Charlie Brown Christmas, It's a Wonderful Life, Elf, and Christmas in July, although I napped through some of the second one and Mike was cooking during Elf), and had a nice dinner of ham, mashed potatoes and green beans that Mike did a great job preparing.  Merry Christmas!