I hope everyone has had and is still having a peaceful holiday.  So far we’ve been pretty low key on our home front.  No giant blow outs where two family members gang up on one.  Not too much talking behind each others back.  The men folk haven’t even had to hide as often as they used to to make sure they didn’t get hit with any flying knives.  That’s the trend at most of our family functions.  As many of you know, when you have a family with all girls and a strong willed mom whom raised all the girls to be pains in the asses too, it can get pretty volatile around the holidays.  In times past I remember plenty of objects getting “accidentally” tossed at each other and even some minor hair pulling.  But most commonly, lots and lots of screaming and yelling.  Even in the times when the number of men have outnumbered the women, it seemed like the ratio for turbulence was still higher on our side.  Husbands, boyfriends, and nephews either didn’t have the courage or were just too smart to get involved in our blow ups. I know we women can get really, really scary.  Picture in your mind the image of the sweet and innocent female suddenly turning into a bitter and evil medusa. If I were a man in this family I’d be hiding under the porch in the backyard too praying that the women didn’t catch their scent.  But as I said, this year has been different… so far.  I think it’s EJ.  It’s really hard to spit fire and nails when there is a perky little face smiling at you with her little dimple.  Kinda takes the heat out of most situations.  Either she will smile, squeal, cry or start grunting and turning purple which is seems to be cause for everyone to stop talking so we can watch her poop.  I can’t wait to tell her the stories of her first Christmas.  

Here’s a nice picture of her Christmas morning.  She found that it was a waste of time to open the gift first to get to that yummy paper. 

Yummy, snarf snarf, mmmmm paper!