Happy post-Christmas, blogfriends! Here is my make-up free (but never lipstain-free) face driving to Spokane last Tuesday. Usually I like to include pictures of the dogs’ sad faces in the backseat, but they didn’t turn out. Heigh ho.

Here’s Joshy dressed up for the big Christmas Eve dinner. The sweater vest belonged to his grandfather.

I neglected to take self-portraits, but you can sort of see my Christmas Eve outfit here. I wore a red silk dress by J. Crew that I scored off ebay for 30 bucks, black stockings and my new fabulous black wedges (height without pain!), and a ridiculously bling-y, heavy rhinestone necklace from Nordstroms that I borrowed from Brenna. A girl needs some sparkle.

After dinner there is always the frenzied gift exchange. This year I nabbed one of those water infuser gadgets that you can pack with fresh fruit, cucumber, whatever. It will be nice in the summer. I don’t even remember what Josh picked…hmmm. Hopefully something good!

“One of these things is not like the others…”

The Christmas morning gift opening extravagaaaanza, which took about 2 hours. Every year Brenna makes her entire family matching flannel pajama sets…even the dolls. I am wearing some sort of festive head plumage here. Werk.

I gained FOUR POUNDS this past week. I tried to cut down on the cookie snarfing but it didn’t work. The cookies were constantly replenished, and they were delicious. Hello, low carb eating for the next __ weeks! Sigh. It was worth it.

Josh’s present to his parents: a portrait of their wedding day. He smeared the ink border just slightly while spraying the overcoat and brought it back home to fix. Nobody noticed, but I get it. The smear would drive me crazy too.

Uncle Josh and sweet little Ronia. Both of my in-laws and Ronia were fighting colds, but so far (knock on wood) Josh and I appear to be healthy.

Future artist?

And YES YES, at LONG LAST, I finally got my ass out on the snow for some cross country skiing. Only took me 8 years, but who’s counting? The first day I didn’t fall at all; the second day I fell only once, going down a tiny hill.

I would not say that it was “fun”. It was a lot of work! And DAMN my legs hurt after the first day. After the second time out, though, not one pain. Interesting.

Fleeta was a very good teacher, and yes, I’d do it again. I’ve heard the more I practice, the more “fun” it becomes. Let’s hope so.

One of my Christmas presents was a teeny-tiny hot pink Samsung digital camera, but it has the most annoying habit of suddenly dying after 5-10 minutes of use (charged!), with the lens open. No bueno. I did manage to take some photos with it, which I’ll be posting before I send it back. So sad. Stay tuned for more!