Merry Christmas!

I hope your Christmas was SAFE and cozy and full of love and laughter

(even if it was in virtual form!)

Most of our snuggles have come from our fuzzy family members!

The Baby keeps doing Very Cute Things.

We got a visitor, flat Stanley, who came from our niece, Cora.  We have been doing fun things to make his stay with us memorable.

I made some new things for our Christmas feast.

First, I made cookies.  I made chocolate crinkle cookies and Spritz.

Stanley had never made Spritz before.  He enjoyed it.

Sometimes the cookie press doesn't turn out the perfect cookies . . . 

"What is this weird cookie?!"

This one turned out like some sort of octopus.

But most of them turned out delicious and beautiful!

We made wreaths and trees.

Plus the octopus:

We went out to see the conjugation of the planets . . . 

and we watched the original Grinch!  I adore it when he gets a grinchy smirk and his top hairs curl and his sneaky smile keeps getting bigger and bigger!

I started out Christmas Day with a big smoothie.  It was delicious.

When it was lunch time, Greg tested out a vegan version of his favorite holiday sandwich alongside the regular version.  The vegan corned beef was sadly terrible.

I made pizza for myself for lunch.  Partially because I love pizza and partially because I was going to try a new recipe for dinner and I wanted to have a back-up meal in case the new recipe didn't work.

Roasted red bell pepper, mushroom, onion, and green olive pizza:

My new recipe was a vegan lasagna!  Rather than using processed "cheese" or a cashew-based cheese, this recipe uses a bechamel (white) sauce made from (almond) milk and (gluten-free) flour.  It looked cheesy, had a good smooth texture, and tasted good, so that's a win!

It had a filling chock full of spinach, mushrooms, onions, and carrots.  Yum!

I made Greg veggie chalupas for dinner (another family Christmas tradition).  I think this was the best batch of them I've made.  He said they were tasty.  In case you don't know, Tex Mex chalupas are typically a bean and shredded meat mixture on top of corn chips with veggies and sauce piled on top.  Greg didn't want a bunch of veggies (usually peppers, onion, lettuce, tomatoes, etc.), but he does have green olives on there!

In between all the eating, we opened some gifts!  Claude helped us out, but the Mini and Stephen were nervous about all the boxes and noises, and Allistair was too sleepy to be involved (he's having a bit of stomach trouble at the moment, though he seems to be bouncing back now).

Greg wore his Christmas sweater that makes it look as if he has a big bushy beard!

Thank you to everyone who generously gave us gifts to celebrate this beautiful holiday of God coming to be WITH US.

After that, we went to look at lights and deliver some gifts to good friends.

Sleep tight and well tonight, my friend.