First Married Christmas

Well it's been almost 2 weeks since my last post, and I think saying that it's been an eventful 2 weeks would be an understatement! To start off, Chris and I dropped Rudy off at the boarding place on Wednesday evening (which was, by the way, SO hard to do) and headed home to my mom's house. We got there late, but if you're my family, you know it's never too late for a mini euchre tournament. It was Chris and I against my mom and Jim and Chris and I won the first two (we usually play the best 2 out of 3). But my mom insisted that we play best 3 out of 5, which I hate playing, and we inevitably lost the next 2 hands, causing it to come down to the 5th game...which we lost as well. Not the way I would have chosen to begin the holidays, but that's just my competitive side coming out :)

On Thursday my mom and I baked and got everything ready for our Christmas dinner the next day. Mid-afternoon Chris and I headed over to his parents' house to see the grandmas, exchange gifts, and see any other family who got there before we had to leave at 4:30 for my extended family gathering. It was really great to see everyone, even if it was pretty short-lived. We then headed over to my extended family gathering where we ate a non-traditional meal (which we loved since we were having a very traditional meal at my mom's the next day) and opened presents with them. By the time we got home and got ready for bed it was almost midnight, so we of course had to go to sleep so that Santa could come :) This is funny because there is nobody left in my immediate family who believes in Santa, yet we still treat it as if we were 5 years old and leave him cookies and leave the reindeer carrots, etc. I personally love it.

Christmas morning came and went in it's normal fashion...first one up gets everyone else up and we all shuffle down to the living room by the tree and see what's in our stockings and what one gift (usually our biggest gift) Santa left in front of our stockings. Santa brought Chris and I a beautiful silverware box for our nice entertainment silverware this year :) And to go with it, we got the rest of our silverware to complete our set, from my mom...as if she knew what Santa was going to bring. What I failed to mention was that before we open presents my mom puts her famous egg casserole in the oven to cook while we enjoy the festivities. Then once we're all done opening presents we relocate to the dining room for our annual Christmas brunch of egg casserole, assorted homemade muffins, coffee, tea, OJ...enough to tide you over until our late-afternoon meal. Our late-afternoon meal this year was leg of lamb (one of my very favorites), homemade mashed potatoes, rolls, and almost all the assorted casseroles you could imagine. This is a traditional meal at my mom's house. She always outdoes herself. And this year was no different. Oh, I almost forgot: we also had about 4 different desserts to choose from as well! Needless to say that after dinner, driving to Chicago was about the last thing Chris and I wanted to do! But we did, because we had a flight to catch the next morning bound for the Dominican! :)

So that was our Christmas this year...it was about as perfect as we could ask for as our first Christmas being married. I will update again later with details from our trip, but for now, laundry and cleaning (aka the real world) are calling my name. I hope everyone had a beautiful Christmas this year, getting everything they wanted, but not just the material wants. We wanted to spend time with our families and put smiles on their faces, and that's exactly what we got.