Sunday at Home

Paul and I were mostly at home today, though I met my friend Lorraine at Panera's for coffee and later ran Paul up to the karate studio for his weekly private lesson.   When we were home we weren't home alone.  Paul's friends Alex and Tommy came over to play this afternoon and after an hour or so of Nerf gun fighting and such they were joined by Paul's twin cousins, John and Michael, who came by with their Dad for an couple of hours.  John joined the Nerf battle raging outside while Michel kept me company as I wrapped presents.

Later Paul's flute teacher, the fabulous Ms. D came over to give him his lesson and stayed for dinner with her boyfriend, Warren.

So we had a full day seeing lots of friends, which was so nice.

I'm enjoying the house all decorated for the holidays.  Ben hung the snowflake lights on the porch the other day and they reflect on the kitchen window.

The mantle has both the little ceramic christmas tree that my Secret Santa at school gave me and the nifty wreath stand that my colleague Rhonda gave me last year.

This cool stocking stand came from Ballard's Design.  It holds three loaded stockings.  Rhonda told me about it and I'm so glad she did since I've never felt comfortable about hanging stockings from our mantel since we actually use our fireplace for fires.

This year I put my collection of Santa mugs, ceramics, plates, and other collectables in the pine hutch, where I can enjoy them.

And I have a small collection of Christmas toys from my Mother in a basket on one of our tables.

Since I was wrapping presents earlier, it gave Ben and and Paul the idea to wrap some.  Paul just brought this one to me to show me that "Daddy taught me how to wrap, and I wrapped this for you."  Awww....

And now the season finale for Homeland.   A pretty good end to a pretty good day!