Happy Holidays

Whew, it's been awhile since I posted, I was caught up in holiday preparations. Our holidays have gone quite smoothly, almost surprisingly so. I decided to just make my homemade cinnamon rolls (made a few weeks in advance and frozen for Christmas morning), wine biscuits (easy recipe for a traditional Italian biscuit), and our traditional gingerbread men cookies, which we put out for Santa each year. This year we cut it close, making them a 7pm Christmas Eve., but we were not stressed over it, in fact, it made the evening go by quickly.
J man got everything he asked for on his list (he only asked for 6 things, and those were provided for by his relatives). We decided to get him a digital camera as our gift for him this Christmas. I was his age when I got my first 110 film camera. I remember taking picture after picture, then having to wait for the film to get developed. Jman gets instant pleasure from his. He loves taking photos and then modifying them on the computer, it is his artistic side coming out, and we like to encourage it. He did not ask for one, but he has been very excited using it. We did not realize that it did not come with a memory card, so he was panicking on Christmas when he could only take a few pictures. Luckily, memory cards are relatively cheap, and he was able to buy one with some babysitting money he had earned the day after Christmas (yes, if we had realized that it needed a card, we certainly would have bought it for him as part of his gift, but since it was after the holiday, we figured it was a way for him to realize that electronic items often have extra costs associated with them).
I got several great items, one of which was the Shark floor cleaner, which steams and sanitizes as it cleans. Yes, I am a dork and get excited over new cleaning tools. It started very early in life; when I was 7 I started asking for a dust buster every year for Christmas (never got one, I think my parents could not rationalize it in their heads).
We were able to Skype my family Christmas morning, and my folks "watched" us open presents, which is nice. It was the next best thing to being at home for the holidays. In fact, that was what they wanted for Christmas, to be Skyped each month, mostly so they can see how Jman is growing and stay connected in his life.
I hope everyone else had a blessed, peaceful holiday. Here is to a new year full of growth and promise.