Holiday Celebrations

You’d think that since Hanukkah, Solstice and Christmas were all in one week and it’s baby’s first holiday season that we’d go all out, right?

Nope, not this year.

Hello, she’s not even going to remember it!

So we kept the holidays very low key. We stayed home and celebrated amongst ourselves (with lots of Skyping with our families — tis the season!). We lighted candles on the menorah and Mama messed up the blessings each night:

We kept the decorations simple (thanks, Alice and Christana!):

We ate good food: lots of yummy latkes (red potatoes with their skins on! zucchini grated in! vitamin packed and delicious!) piled high with sour cream, smoked salmon and dill. (Major kudos to the hubby for making them not once, but twice!) And we continued the Leyba Family tradition of bagels and lox on Christmas morning (and they aren’t even Jewish!), although we technically enjoyed our bagels several days earlier and ran out of whitefish by Christmas (next year we’ll have to stock up and bring this back to breakfast on the 25th; David was a little blue about it when the stores were closed so we couldn’t pick up more… Whoops! Now we know better.).

And the chocolate! Wow, did I have a sugar hangover:

The baby opened one small present each day for eight nights. Most of the gifts were from our amazing families and friends.  You kept surprising us with lovely cards and packages for Miss Leyba. What a lucky girl! You guys are awesome! Thank you so much for the great gifts!

She loved every single one.

And the packaging! What joy!

David and I received exactly what we wanted: shiney new loaf pans from Williams-Sonoma for the mama (I can’t wait to get baking!) and Daddy is taking four yoga classes a week (approximately) for two weeks straight. And we got lots of new clothes. Hooray!

The best present of course is being able to spend these two weeks together. We are one happy family over here. (And trying not to think about pesky things like pay cuts and the impending layoffs!)

Overall it was a very low key and merry holidays. How I wish we could keep it this simple every year… Something tells me next year it’s going to be a whole lot bigger. Since the baby is going to understand what’s going on and everything. Hmm…