Merry Mary

As you may have noticed, I, formerly "Enlarging Marge," took a bit of a holiday break. I didn't drive to Bloomfield Hills. I didn't do any freelance work. I didn't sew any dog collars. And I didn't do much blog posting. I did, however, take some photos. Vacation's over - on to posting. (And doing freelance work - I promise, Maria!)

After an exhaustingly fun Christmas Eve with "the boys," Maizey crashed, forgoing the cookies-for-Santa routine and sleeping until a leisurely 8:30 a.m. Will and I were up at 6 though, for set up. Following my wise parents' "one gift from Santa, one gift from Mom and Dad (+stockings)" rule, there was little prep. An Ikea easel and wooden train set... plus heaps of goodies from out-of-towners.

We both went up and collected her from her room, but I had the pleasure of carrying her downstairs and rounding the corner to the living room. Seeing the train set, glowing tree and easel, she immediately implored, "Down, Mama. Down!" then ran to the loot.

Customary Caldecott winning book from Grandma Betty...

"A Ball for Daisey." by Chris Raschka.

And fabulous cards from awesomely generous PaPa and BaBa.

 We were enamored with the gift. Maizey the the photo inside.

And so it went...

  Merry, Mary indeed. 

It was a marvelous morning.

And we only opened about half of the presents. Lady got a titch overwhelmed so we decided to stretch out the fun and opened gifts for the remaining week.