Christmas 2009 wrap up

Christmas this year was the cherry on top of a wonderful year...it was the year my first child was born, a lot of new friendships and connections were made that make us feel so grateful for all that we have...I wanted to express my fondness for many of those friends...we made mango salsa and pumpkin bread for our friends...we thought we were being so crafty...apparently, we pale in comparison to many of the much more talented and creative people out there!

We headed over to Evanston to spend Christmas at Eric's parents' house...here is the Max on Christmas Eve.

Santa made a surprise appearance Christmas morning...
Here are some of the highlights of our spoils...a wii, a Ipod shuffle, a fly rod, a wii game and microphones,...

and Eric's parents and Eric surprised me by getting these paintings that I bought in China stretched, set and framed...BEST CHRISTMAS PRESENT EVER!!!!!

Some more highlights...Carli got these for Julie...

I, too, had to try them on...

We had our traditional Christmas brunch with Finnan Haddie, bacon, poached eggs and hollandaise sauce, bacon, English muffins, fruit salad, poppers, bacon, bacon and more bacon...Max had his first taste of bacon...and he is definitely a Phillips as he LOVED it!
On another day I made some crab cakes

and some Thai food...Chiu's Chowder...

we played some Hulk Operation...for about two seconds...

the boredom set in and we started doing weird things...Carli got a hand wax spa and managed to remove the entire glove intact...the gauntlet was thrown and we were all up for the challenge...

Can you match each person's hand....? My favorite is little Max's hand was thrown in for no reason...

You have to have tried this to appreciate how difficult it is...

We played a lot of wii fit and sang on the wii...then we went to see Avatar

I won't spoil anything...but, seriously, I stayed up for hours afterwards thinking about this movie...it's up there as one of my top 5 favorite movies, ever...it's liberal and flanked with politics, racial, ethnic and cultural biases...but AMAZING...a little existential, but AMAZING. I highly recommend it!