Belated Photo Essays: Twas the Night Before Christmas...

All right... moving on with the belated photo essays of our family at Christmas time!

We last saw the family gathered round the noble fir (okay the plasticky flame resistant fakey tree) decorating and adorning with abandon. (Okay, maybe not the whole family... we purposely leave the twins out of a lot of things. Its amazing what gets done around here at nap time!)

I am mostly disappointed with how these photographs turned out. But I have to blame half of that on the fact that I STILL hate flash photography and its unnatural look, and so I tend to go without. So my pics either come out garish or yellow and blurry.

The other problem is I have recently upgraded to the ultimo pinnacle of Photoshoppy goodness, Photoshop CS3!!! And I have since downloaded a plethora of brushes and actions. What are actions, you ask? Let me tell you! It seems you can record some of the steps you take to "shop" your photos to make them look a certain way, and if you seem to take the same steps over and over, you can record the steps as an action, open a photo, press one button and a dozen or so steps can play out right before your eyes!

Of course, I downloaded nearly every free action I can find, so I have been playing with them all, and all my pics now look WAY over processed, and likely will for awhile until the fun of new actions wears off and I go back to a more natural look.

So, anyway, where was I? Ah, yes, the night before Christmas. Christmas Eve! We tried to gather the three kids beneath the tree right before bed, just after baths. We even plied them with ginger snaps and sugar plums. This was the best picture out of 4,237. And it shows why I hate flash photography.

Then we tossed the babies placed our sweet angels lovingly into their snug little beds. It was time to get ready for Santa! So, we read Santa's blog one more time, saw he was in South America and heading north, and that he wanted carrots placed out for the reindeer as well as cookies in every home for himself, the tubby little elf!

So, we got Santa a few cookies, picked out a green plate for Santa and a red bowl for reindeer carrots, because they were Christmas colors, and Noah poured the milk by himself down there on the floor and placed them all on the hearth. Then, we moved the out-of-reach stockings and hung them by the chimney with care.

Lastly, we cleaned the living room of toys, so that Santa wouldn't be appalled with how we sometimes live, and we headed upstairs for a long winter's nap.

I read Noah the Night Before Christmas story, and stopped repeatedly to explain things like kerchiefs, and sashes, "stirring", and "wondering eyes". Kinda ruined the flow, but what can you do?

Then Daddy and I drifted off in bed for a little while before waking and heading downstairs to place our presents to the kids under the tree, but would you believe Santa had come and gone already?? There were only crumbs left on the cookie plate, and there were a few toys scattered around the tree.

Santa had even left Noah an unwrapped Razor scooter and six little Nutcracker soldiers. Noah has been so taken with nutcrackers the last two Christmases, we knew he would love having a few of his own. Santa is so smart.

The stockings were stuffed, too (some much more than others) and all was well.

Michael and I sat ourselves under the tree around midnight and set up the camera to take a couple pictures of ourselves in our rarely quiet home.

It was so much fun, seeing the magic through a child's eyes who was finally old enough to really understand what magical things were about to happen in his very own home that night, and really believe. Its going to be triply fun in a couple more years, I believe.

And probably triply expensive.

But what the hell? It was so worth it!