We just got home from our “last Christmas,” with my husband’s mom and his sister and her family, and that officially wraps up the holiday for us for 2012.

Here’s a look at a few of our highlights from our many celebrations, mostly in photos.

Our one Christmas wish that we’re hoping to still make come true for ourselves is a new camera – we use ours for all sorts of projects, including our work-related blogs, and the little point-and-shoot we have isn’t cutting it! In fact, we missed capturing some of our most enjoyable Christmas moments this year because the only shots we got were un-view-ably blurry. So we’ll see what we can find that fits into the budget!

Above is our tree, fully (and I do mean fully) trimmed, with packages underneath. Since we don’t do Santa in our family, it’s easy to get everything wrapped ahead of time. We actually have two full sets of ornaments that we alternate – this is what we call the “family” set, and we have another set that is all Irish-themed.

Here, Chris and I are opening our gift from my mom. This was one of the highlights of Christmas for me – it was all edible! (Mom knows that Chris and I are fairly minimalist and didn’t need a lot of stuff.) It included some of our favorites – beef sticks, prosciutto, special cheeses, gift cards to the local convenience store for work snacks, and even a gift certificate to our favorite sushi date spot. Awesome!! Ashar took this picture; she liked the “artsy” angle.

Another mega-highlight for me was receiving a copy of Uncle Wiggily and His Friends by Howard Garis from Chris. I have an absolute love of the Uncle Wiggily stories, but the books are hard to find and long since out of print in their original form. This is an incredibly nice copy – which means it probably went for way more than I’d ever spend on myself, despite how much I love it. So it was the PERFECT gift!

At right above, Mom is opening her big gift – which was kind of a family gift. It’s a KitchenAid super-mega-mondo mixer. (Not a technical term.) She was thrilled! Our previous mixer was failing (and wasn’t capable of heavy doughs like bread any more), so it was great timing! And, we were able to give that one to a friend of ours who just needs an every-now-and-then mixer, so it worked out great.

Speaking of friends, my best friend’s husband is a firefighter with one of our local companies, and on Christmas Eve, he and another driver took two engines out with “Santa” on the top, driving all around their township. We went over to the station house to see them head out, and despite the snow and sleet, it was a super-cool way to do something local and fun!

Ashar did ALL of her own Christmas shopping this year. She was very clear on what she wanted to get for everyone, which was awesome.

Here, she and Chris are showing off what I think might have been her finest purchase – a set of Christmas ephemera that he could write about for his blog, Papergreat, inside a 1940s-era box called a Tuckaway. She spent hours at a local antiques market picking out just the right things!

This was another holiday project of Ashar’s – painting her own train. One of our family goals for 2013 is to build a real train display, probably O-Gauge, in our basement, but for now, painted had to suffice! She worked very hard on this with my mom! The cutest part was that she had little toy animals riding in the train, and the cars were filled with a tree and packages. Well, on Christmas eve, she emptied the cars and set up a tree and gifts so that the animals would have a Christmas morning. It was super-sweet!

There are two “Christmases” I don’t have photos of – the one where Ashar went to my ex’s parents’ house for their family Christmas, where she got a remote-controlled car that she LOVES, among other cool goodies, and also the one with one of my best friends, Tracey, which involved gift-wrapping, briefly, our big mitten-toed cat, Mitts. Let’s just say it’s probably better that isn’t pictured.

Our final celebration was at the home of my mother-in-law, Mary. Here, you can see her and also Ashar opening one of her gifts – a fun animal-themed game called Hit the Habitat Trail that I think will be fun.

Ashar also got a soft blue LLBean winter hat… which she promptly put on, then topped with her TapOut baseball cap.

Word, from our family’s Christmas to yours.