ThankBirthMas

I was so happy to have Steph and Chris here for Thanksgiving. And just by coincidence my birthday happened to fall on the same day. Also we knew Christmas was right around the corner and there was no way we would be together for that, so what to do? Why, let's just cram them all together in one shot. We called it ThankBirthMas.

THANKsgiving

Here's Steph helping with the deviled eggs. She just jumped right in there and whipped them up for us. Delicious!

Do I see a green bean (gasp) casserole? Yep, Steph did that for me, too. We also had dressing, mashed potatoes and gravy, fruit salad, and cranberry sauce straight from the can.

Here's the turkey. Mike did an exceptional job this year. It was juicy and fell right off the bone.

A little after dinner shenanigans. Naughty snowman!

Chris snapped this picture of Mike. I don't remember what he thought he was doing but it sure was funny.

BIRTHday

I baked a cake and Steph decorated it for me. Beautiful! I was really unhappy about this birthday. 50 years old? How the hell did that happen? Not something I wanted to dwell on. There was an off key, out of sync rendition of Happy Birthday to You, one single candle, and we ate cake. Chris and Steph got me a stuffed Pirate Scrat toy. He's sitting atop my monitor now.

ChristMAS

We were busy decorating throughout the day. I managed to get only one decent shot of Chris trying to fluff up these little trees.

There's our Christmas tree. Is it the angle of the picture or is that tree leaning seriously to the left?

Yep, a serious lean to the left...

We had decided to give each other a gift of $5 or less just so that we could have presents under the tree. The idea was to get something silly and fun. Here's Chris arranging them nicely for us.

He's trying to figure out what it is. 

Here is my real gift to Chris and Steph, a photo book all about the two of them. I know Chris really liked it, he teared up. Score!

So we tore open the presents and started to play. Steph and I got lottery scratchers. We won $5.

There was Play-Doh, lots of it. I'm going to figure out a way to preserve these for ornaments. Yes, there is some R rated material in there. I wonder who did that?

I went to the dollar store and loaded up on kids cheap toys for my gifts. I wanted it to be just like we were kids again. As you can see, it worked.

There were balloons and bubbles and kazoos and all kinds of fun non adult things.

Oddly enough I have more than one picture of Mike in this same exact pose.

Yes, they are busy taking turns whacking each other in the balls with the balloons. Sheesh!

I'm so proud!

We pretty much trashed the place.

So there you have it. The very first ThankBirthMas.