Harbor Cruise

Santa brought us a Historic Charleston Harbor Cruise for Christmas. The cruise was scheduled today at 1:30.

We got there a little early, so we had some time for pictures!

The piling colors were beautiful

The boys played while we waited. It was only 15 minutes!

Our boat, the Carolina Belle

Happy boy underway

The pineapple fountain

Perfect weather for a boat ride

Charleston

This island used to be full of trees and this is where they hung pirates.  I can not remember the name right now.  I am looking it up.

Fort Sumter

Birds in our wake

What a great day!
After the cruise we went over to Fleet Landing and enjoyed a late lunch, early dinner. Really, we need a word for that. Like brunch. Linner sounds weird.
We watched the Carnival cruise ship depart for the Bahamas.
Then we went home to watch some of the movies Santa brought us for Christmas

Great day!!

Merry Christmas

We had a wonderful Christmas.
Lon slept till 6:30am!  Then he was go go go!!

Lon wanted to give us the presents he bought for each of us at the school's holiday bizarre.

Then he got down to the business of opening his gifts!
It's an XBOX!  AN XBOX!!  He did a dance around the living room!

AND the Disney Infinity 2.0 game!!

There were many many presents.
Scout was having a great time playing in the piles of the wrapping papers!

Grammalyn looking at the book from Australia as Lon opens another gift!

Ranger did not like the wrapping paper pile so much!


The presents were all opened.  We all got everything we wanted!
It was time for breakfast. I made some bacon as the overnight french toast baked.

Lon wore his new Boeing flight jacket to church!
We love going to  10am Mass on Christmas Day. It is not crowded.  We are not overly tired and there is no stress!

This is the outside Creche

The inside Creche.
We were not able to help decorate the church this year as Lon had a fever.

We had some time to relax before Dinner!

The  beast before roasting

Goofy faced kid!

We had standing rib roast,  duchess potatoes, creamed onions, broccoli, and rolls.  It was a great feast. and we have leftovers!
Lon ate roast beast!  He was not a fan of duchess potatoes.

We hope you all had a wonderful Christmas!

Getting along

The kittens are now getting along just fine. They play and meow at each other and it sounds like they are trying to kill each other. Then this happens

I think we are going to be just fine

Santa has been here!

Merry Christmas!
This is the shot of most of the gifts for everyone and from everyone

Santa has left these in red! With the snowman ribbon that Santa has used since Lon's first Christmas!
I think the big one is supposed to be opened first, that is why it is in teh middle of the floor. Now I just have to wait till Lon wakes up !!

Gingerbread House!

Today we thought it would be a great idea to get the gingerbread house made! We bought a pre fabricated house this year.  We were never all that good at building the house ourselves!
This year, Lon wanted to do it all by himself. So he did.

  First we had to get a shot of Grammalyn with Ranger. They are having a good time together!

Lon did not want any help. He had this handled!

He is doing a great job!

Looking good

Adding on details

He did a great job!  He is rightfully proud of himself! I am too!

Cookies for 2014

I have no idea why this picture insists on being this way.  I will keep trying to wrangel it into the correct position, but until then, this is what you have.
This is our cookie tray for this year, as in year's past I am posting what we made.
Gingerbread boys and trees,  Sugar Cookie boys and trees, Rugalach, Cherry Pistachio short bread, pecan tassies, mincemeat tassies, cheesecake tassies, chocolate peppermint bon bon cookies, coconut kisses, coconut kisses dipped in chocolate, ricotta cookies, candied fruit biscotti, russian tea cakes, rice krispie treats dipped in chocolate, pretzels dipped in chocolate and sprinkles, turtle cookies, both cashew and pecan, and white chocolate cranberry pistachio cookies, and last but not least, hot chocolate cookies!
I also made potato candy. Yes, candy made from mashed potatoes. It turned out tasty!
We also made the Poppyseed roll. No nut roll this year.

James Island Lights 2014

This afternoon we thought was the perfect day to look at the lights.   We left early thinking there would be traffic, but it was very light.  We got to the park before the park opened.  We had to wait in a line. It was a great thing ! We got to take photos of Lon with the light displays. Something we had never had the chance to do before

This year was the 25th year of the lights!  They had a special commemorative book made, and yes, we did get one.

Lon is not actually touching the lights.

We are moving! We were the 10th car in line, It was not a long wait. I think we will do it this way again next year!

Our first pass around

This year I think we got a good photo of the shrimp boat.

We stopped at Winter Wonderland. Parking was great. The only sad part was Santa was not going to show up for another hour.   We did not get a Santa photo this year. We were both disappointed. But it is okay. We will get one next year.

The carousel

Again, Lon is not actually touching the lights.
 He thought it would look cool if he was petting a deer

The back of the sand sculpture

The front of the sand sculpture

Finally, S'more time!

wait, what?  We did not know Jack would be here too! He was in a car a few ahead of us.

Munching on s'mores !

Above the gift shop, Santa in lights about to go down the chimney

We did three passes around the park.
These are the photos we took!

I am not posting all the photos I took.
But a good sample of them!

I am thinking of how we can do this over our tiny driveway

This tree is the one that was chosen for the 25th anniversary ornament.
It is so pretty in person.
It was a great time.
Looking forward to doing it again next year!