Home for the Holidays

Christmas in North Carolina with the fam was full of so much goodness. First, one of my favorite going home songs:

Four days of family, friends, good food, and good cheer... that was really all that I wanted for Christmas this year, and I got it in spades.

The highlight of the holidays, of course - no, not the five bowls of collards I ate or the endless pork delicacies - were my niece and nephew, who are too much fun for words. Liam is pushing 7 months and 25 pounds, and is impossibly happy and adorable. Taylor is a total two and a half year old - except for the ridiculous grown-up brains in her little blonde head, of course. They're amazing.

The rest of us? Well, we watch and play and cater to their every whim, of course. As it should be.

So to Taylor and Liam, Lisa and Will, Lane and Nicole, Mom and Dad, HLB, and the rest of the fam... thanks for welcoming Trevor to his first North Carolina Christmas in style.

After a ransacked room littered in more wrapping paper than should possibly exist for a "cutting back Christmas," we entertained ourselves by laughing at reception photos in this gift to my parents:

...and sampling some of this: (details to come on the contents, I promise)

Besides the raucous laughter at my parents', my sister's, and the farm, my favorite moment was probably Sunday night in my parents' living room, four of us sprawled out and exhausted on couches in front of a roaring fire, sipping on Scotch and reading our books, with not a worry in the world. Now that is the life, and makes for a very merry Christmas, indeed.