On the 3rd day of Christmas...

Well it came, and it went.
No matter how much I didn't feel like I was ready, wasn't in the Christmas spirit, wanted to change last week, Christmas came the same time it does every year, and passed just as quickly. And to be honest, it acutally was still pretty good. I had my moments where I felt down, but most of the day I just felt loved and blessed to have such a wonderful family.
I think the real bummer for me was that for the whole week leading up to my favorite time of year, when I'm normally filled with anticipation and excitment for all the family and food and special moments I was going through so much. As a result, even though I enjoyed Christmas day, I felt like I missed the majority of Christmas. Therefore, Chris and I have decided that in the Jeska household, the next two weeks, until we head up to Minnesota for Christmas with his family, we will be pretending like Christmas is not yet over. Yep, you read that right: the tree is staying up until the middle of January, as are the Chrismas lights. We may have to borrow a few Christmas movies from someone becuase I'm pretty sure the TV stations are done playing them, and I'm going to really have to dig to find my favorite Christmas CD's. But while most people are making comments about how bummed they are that Christmas is over, it is still in full swing here. Besides, Christmas is 12 days anyway, but most people only celebrate the 1st day, we are going to celebrate all of them!
My family has already gone home, which is the only thing that keeps it from totally continuing to feel like Christmas right now. It was so good to have them here, it's amazing how life just seems less complicated when your parents are around. And this year, they really left their mark, primarily with this little bundle of fun for Benton:

As you can see, we are still having issues with steering, good thing they bought him a helmet to go with it. I got lots of wonderful things as well, but my FAVORITE gift award this year goes to....
drumroll please....





MY HUSBAND, who gave me this:

I took a picture of it but couldn't get it to load for some weird reason, so I had to load one from the web, but this is the same color, etc as the one I got and I LOVE IT. Can't wait to start baking!

And I've got 11 more days of Christmas left to do it!

What was your favorite gift this year? What are you doing to stay in the holiday spirit?