Christmas Day Trina1:31 PM 0 comments

Christmas in the Almeda household was beautiful.  I rolled out of bed at 7:30 in the morning, and headed down the hallway to get the camera off the charger and wake up the little one.  Yes, I had to wake her up.  She may be the only child in the world who is fine with sleeping in on Christmas Day.  I'm okay with that, though. 

She stood in the hallway for several seconds, a look of bewilderment on her face.  The cookies and milk were gone.  Something was very different about the fireplace.  Wait.  Something was very different about the fireplace!  Her princess castle was here!  With princess dolls!

And she beelined it for the hearth.

It took some prodding to get her to notice the letter left behind by Santa, and the stocking with a couple extra goodies.

She spent the next hour playing with her princess castle.

Meanwhile, I prepared breakfast.  Originally, I had planned to construct character-shaped pancakes (a Rudolph, a snowman).  But, since Santa's cookies took up the last of the flour, no pancakes were to be had.  We had eggs, bacon, and strawberries instead.  Not a bad sacrifice.

After breakfast, we showered, got dressed up, and headed out to visit First Baptist Church of Woodstock for their Christmas morning services.  To appease Fallon's excitement, we rode the escalators to the top to sit in the uppermost balcony. 

View from the top

After the service, we posed in front of one of their Christmas trees for a family photo.  So here we are, the Almeda Family of 2011:

 

After church, it was time to unwrap the bundles of joy under the tree.  Despite cutting back in a fairly significant way this year on our Christmas spending, it still took about three hours to finally get to the last gift.



The Christmas loot

 Fallon's favorite thing out of the whole bundle...the princess castle.  I guess the kid knew what she wanted.  Thank you, Santa, for listening. 

Later that evening, we headed out to Snellville to join Mr. Almeda's side of the family at his sister's beautiful home.  His sister's son just passed his first birthday about a month ago, and is a very friendly and sweet little boy.  We spent the rest of the evening with good company, including several of Mr. Almeda's cousins, all of his siblings and their significant others, and his parents.

Mr. Almeda, with his sister and brothers

Mr. Almeda's parents and siblings

Me, with the littles: my own little princess and nephew Anderson

All in all, it was a good holiday.  Merry Christmas, everybody!