Here I sit, listening to George Winston’s December and Linus and Lucy albums as they stream through the aether to my computer, countless bits of paper and packaging and wire twisty ties and whatnot strewn all over the front room, browsing through the couple hundred Christmas season photos I’ve taken thus far.

I’d say it’s about time to share some, wouldn’t you?

We spent Sunday evening at Mark and Sharon’s house and got to see Joni and Javi and Jeff and Sarah and their respective new kiddos Cameron and Seth.

Cameron’s a real ham for the camera and Seth is just a dang good looking kid with big blue eyes.

Then we had Christmas Eve dinner at my Grandparents’ house and had a good time chowing down on roast beef and opening presents. I actually didn’t end up taking too many photos there, but I got a couple of good shots of Isabella reading The Night Before Christmas.

Now an aside: Lately I’ve been reading a lot about off-camera flash photography, and have gotten some cheap speed lights and stands and some wireless flash triggers to boot. I decided that this year I wanted our Christmas-morning photos to actually, oh I don’t know… Ah. Oh yes. I wanted them to look good. So I spent a little time last night setting up two strobes on stands in the corners of the room opposite the Christmas tree, aimed them at the ceiling, took a few test shots, and got everything ready to take Christmas morning photos with as little thought as possible.

Kristina and I both stayed up fairly late, but still didn’t manage to catch a glimpse of Santa Claus when he visited our house. Next time I’ll rig up some motion detectors to my camera and catch him in the act.

So this morning, our ambulatory kids came and woke us up bright and early. We donned our comfy robes and pajamas and whatnot, and headed to the front room to find what Santa had brought, and made a huge mess opening presents and assembling toys.

David got his first real bicycle and Isabella got her very own MP3 player, complete with about ten different Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson albums (amongst others) courtesy of her dear old dad.

All that remains now is our epic journey to Oklahoma to spend some time with some of Kristina’s family, and our Christmas season for this year will come to an end.

More photos are available in the photo albums.

It also happens to be the time of year when some of us are just a little more likely to go on a murderous rampage at any given moment, due to the fact that for some reason, it also happens to be the time of year when most of the population seems to lose any last vestiges of common sense that they may have been clinging to since the post-Thanksgiving shopping season began*.

[singlepic id="2427" w="60" h="240" mode="" float="right" ] On a lighter note: Kristina and the kids got our Christmas tree put up the other day, and got it pretty well loaded down with ornaments. Over the years my Grandmother has been making ornaments for each of our kids, so I of course took photos of them in their natural habitat.

It’s become our tradition that Kristina and the kids decorate the interior of the house including tree, ornaments, and Christmas cards, while it falls to me to decorate the outside, consisting almost entirely of roof lights and whatever else we may throw out there. I’ll be doing that job in the coming week, weather permitting.

* Note to self: For the next month, stay as far away from Walmart as humanly possible, so as to avoid an otherwise imminent murderous rampage.