You are now clear to shout, cry, and pout...

Santa Claus made his stop at our house.

This morning, it was time to open gifts.  At this stage in our lives, gift-giving is tough.  Well, the giving is easy, but the picking out is tough.  We are kind of all in a place where there isn't much we need, and we're about spending some quality time together.

Steph was delighted with a gift for her kitties...

It's a "bed width" cushy pad, hand made by Joan, for the foot of their bed.  All 3 cats can lay together, if they want... and if they stay on the pad, there is still room for the humans.

There is a running joke about "It's a blue shirt" from when we used to guess what was in a package... and I correctly guessed "blue shirt".  It's a teal shirt...

There was a more quizzical look on my face when I opened one of the presents from Joan - it was a piece of nice aircraft grade aluminum with a multitude of holes drilled in it.  A companion gift was a rotating head mount for a camera tripod.  I had to look it up: the plate is a very low profile mount for any of my cameras, allowing me to put the camera on the ground, strapped to a tree or a fence, sitting on the hood of a car, etc, etc...

I may not be explaining it well, but it will be a handy way to keep a camera in place for low level or low light situations.  And, it works for my action cams as well as with my DSLR.  Slick.

A gift to Joan and me from Steph and Dan was the highlight: a piece of paper each.  It isn't the gift, it is the clue to the gift...

We had to talk it out.  A bunch.  B + a penguin - CH, and a Christmas scene - N + J.  I could see that the penguin was Chilly Willy... add B to the front of that and remove CH... Billy.  The second part was tougher: we had to have a bit of prompting to figure out that the Christmas scene was "noel"... - N makes it "oel" and add J.  Joel.  Put it together... Billy Joel... we're going to see Billy Joel in concert when we go to Phoenix!  All 4 of us!  That is too cool!

Rufus was given drugs by Steph and Dan...

Well, chew toy that has catnip in it.  He liked it a lot, but is now sleeping it off.

When gift-giving time was over, I got to try out my new camera mount with a few practice shots...

Fresh baked cinnamon rolls for breakfast, the ham is in the oven, and there are more games to be played.  Yep, a very merry Christmas.