Christmas season still in progress

I finally did get the lights all strung and the ornaments all placed.



I don't know about you all, but we still have one more family get-together before we move on to New Year's celebrations. Hubster's family's Christmas is tomorrow, since we traveled to Oklahoma for a family reunion, Christmas Eve meal & Christmas Day with my huge family this year. There are over fifty of us, now! I love seeing the great-nieces and nephews and their parents. We have so many fun memories of Christmases past.

In the meantime, Queen Shenaynay asked some of her blogger friends what are the most popular family gifts received this year...those gifts that everyone wants to play or mess with. In our house this year it would be instruments, simple camera gear, two footballs and movies. Foreign movies, at that.


I already shared some photos of the two newest instruments in our home. Here is the moment of receiving the banjo. We gave J the strings, first. It was priceless. These will be going with oldest ds when he moves out soon, though.



This is Ky's new camera.


The funniest situation is that Hubster and I got each other the same thing, almost on the scale of "The Gift of The Magi." I didn't sell the DVD player to buy hubby's gift, but we did buy each other the full set of Jeeves and Wooster. "What o' what, what?" you ask? Quite funny, that!


Anyone like to buy our extra set from us? 'Tis brand new. We'd give you a deal! LOL.

Hubs and I are reading some of the Jeeves stories aloud to each other when we have some free time.

The next cool tool is this fancy tripod.


I broke my old, cheap one taking photos of the last lunar eclipse. I was maneuvering the poor, flimsy thing at different angles and the neck snapped right off. THIS particular tripod has multiple right angles which I can tighten down for a variety of close-ups and angles and for keeping everything still in low-light situations. I just love it. It does all the things I wished my other one could do. It is stronger and heavier, so not great for backpacking and traveling...but I can work around that, I think. Maybe I'll get a light-weight monopod someday for just such a trip.

Our youngest two boys, ages 12.5 and 14.5, love tossing the football, and they'd worn out their other footballs. One of our gifts to our Freshman son is the fee for Spring Training. He will be joining the homeschool football team soon, and he is so excited.

What kind of Christmas (or Christmases) did you all have?
Javamom