Lisa arrived mid-afternoon yesterday (after having to turn back at some point to grab the gifts she'd left behind...) and before we pigged out on the turkey feast we opened presents. Here is the pile as it appeared before she arrived and added hers; those on the lower left were some gifts she had ordered and had sent here. 

I opened mine from Lisa while she was here - though the daily calendar she finds for me each year had not yet arrived, so she was a little bummed about that.  

Unfortunately it created a bit of an issue <sigh> when I elected to save most of my gifts from Tom to open during each night of Chanukah.  After all these years, he still doesn't get it.  

I give HIM Christmas presents (for his holiday!) but for some reason he thinks I should also open mine from on Christmas, even though it is not my holiday.  Maybe I should wait to give him his birthday presents on my birthday and see if that might finally make sense to him?

After candles last night I opened a couple from him.  We always did a jigsaw puzzle on New Years Eve when the kids were growing up, so I always get one of those.  This was a fun one (Globetrotter World) and the 3 of us worked on it throughout the evening.  It wasn't completed by the time I was ready for bed around 9:00 (after being up since 4:00) but found this waiting for me this morning.

I also got this wall calendar for the kitchen, 

with wonderful colorful shots of the little guys.  

Late afternoon, just as I was finishing cleaning up the kitchen after we'd eaten, Colleen stopped by on her way over to their family celebration at her daughter's; she wanted to drop off a batch of her homemade caramel corn.  (Somehow I managed to make a sizable dent in it last night despite pigging out on dinner in the late afternoon.) She was definitely envious of my clean kitchen since apparently she'd left hers a disaster. 

Thought you'd also like to know:

Colleen approved of my progress on Hilda's pillow.  

Here's how that looks at the moment.  I'll still need to do the windows (and then buttonhole all the applique) but I'm definitely in the home stretch!  The batik border fabric will also be the pillow backing; and it's a good thing I didn't make a special trip down to SAS for the 12" pillow form... because it's turned into a 16" pillow!