Since Miss Hope likes her some photos...

Jack opening one of his stocking stuffers... He's always complaining he has no energy so I bought him a bottle of One a Day Vitamins formulated for increased Energy!
This is my sister C and her beau, T. He really seems to be a nice guy. He cares a lot for her and for her kids, despite their less than enthusiastic reception of his place in their lives. And he gave C a beautiful emerald and diamond band for Christmas!

These are the beautiful flowers I got for my birthday from my sister and my mom and from the girls at the office. (This year Jack gets a failing mark for no flowers!) And sorry, P, I realized after I took this picture, that it's another one where you can't see the purple flowers in the arrangement! They were there! I swear!

Here's Maria, opening one of her presents Christmas afternoon. When she opened it, she smiled big and said, "I KNEW I could count on you for a great sweater!" As boring as it sounds when I read it here, there was such enthusiasm in her voice! It's a good thing! (I didn't take a picture of the set of knives I bought her. Knives that were identical to the knives her mother bought her that she opened earlier in the morning. Darn it! So I'm returning them and contributing to Maria's Ugg cause...)

Isn't he just one of the handsomest boys you've ever seen? This is my nephew, J. There aren't a lot of pictures of him where he's just genuinely him, no sneer, no sarcastic expression in his eyes, just J. Love him so much!

And this beauty is my niece, A. Gorgeous, right?! Another of those rare photos, a real smile, happy, carefree, no teen angst... (These last two pictures were taken in our house on Christmas Eve.)

And here's this year's mini-tree. I bought this little 5' tree for the lake. I used to stand it on a coffee table in front of the picture window, but this year, it took the place of our "real" tree in Clifton. We went looking for a 9' prelit artificial tree post-holiday. And we found one. Beautiful. Perfect for our 9' ceilings. P.S. When you have 9' ceilings, a 9' tree doesn't work 'cause the 9' refers to the height of the tree not.counting.the.stand. We now have big gouges in our library ceiling where we tried to set up the new tree we bought on a non-returnable basis at 50% off... (Thank goodness I bleach blonde highlights into my hair: I played the blonde card at Home Depot and said, "My husband said our ceilings were 9' high but I didn't know that the tree height didn't include the stand and $150 is a lot of money to spend on a tree I can't use! Can't I please return it? I just bought it this morning!..." And he let me return it!)
This was our dining room table set up for Christmas Eve dinner. And yes, baby Jesus is in the manger even though he technically wasn't born yet... And yes, those are paper plates. Boy, was this an easy holiday! Minimal dishwashing, just sweep off the table and toss in the trash!!!

Sometime in the next few weeks, I'm going to post some pictures taken in my home so you can sort of peek into my house... Another blogger did this and it was so much fun to see how others live. It was like peeking in their windows but with permission!!!