A pleasant Christmas morning

We sent the kids to bed (and for once they didn't seem to mind -- hmmmm) with a stern warning not to show their faces downstairs until 7am. It would have gotten us an extra hour of sleep, except that Colleen had a restless night and needed to get the pot of borscht going at 6am. So it's up at the crack of dawn to make coffee and soup.

When the kids came down (why can't I get them up that easily for school?) we started opening presents. Mostly a mix of useful stuff, DVDs, and a few books (I got Colleen the new Umberto Eco novel; I got her the two newest by Ursula LeGuin). I'm not going to go into details on the rest, but the little plush Cthulhu I got at a gift exchange on Saturday also deserves a mention, as does the pewter rose I found for Colleen at the Dickens Fair on Sunday.