Playing Catch-Up Christmas Style

Happy New Year!! I hope that everyone enjoyed their wonderful holidays! I know I did. Winter break (since November 26th) has consisted of three drives over to B-town to visit my family and friends. Though none of them last nearly as long as I would like them to.

Christmas was wonderful. On Christmas Eve I went over to Jaslynn's house to help decorate cookies and deliver her gift. I love decorating cookies with her because she sends the 'ugly' ones home with me. My decorating skills really decline once I enter her house for some odd, unknown reason. For Christmas she gave me some really cute froggie slippers (to make friends with the toads that poop on my doorstep) along with an awesome photo frame that holds eight photos which she loaded up with beautiful photos she took of flowers and fruits. I have to get a good photo of it so I can post it up here because that little sentence doesn't do it justice. I have it on my wall to the right of my computer--it currently doesn't have to share this wall with anything else. It's funny that the best wall for hanging photos up on and I hadn't because I couldn't decide what I wanted to hang up. I have been going through my photos (and there's a lot of them) and changing out what's in some frames yet I still haven't gotten to the point that I needed a hammer or nails.

Christmas morning we had our traditional opening of our stockings (in our pajamas, of course) then having breakfast of scrambled eggs and homemade cinnamon rolls. Actually until just recently we'd have some sort of breakfast muffin or coffee cake but Mom has learned the magic of cinnamon rolls so we get to enjoy those instead. They are sooooooo good I'd eat them all the time if I didn't want to have to practically live on a treadmill as a result. After breakfast we open presents and either Becca or I (in our 20s) still play 'Santa' and pass out gifts to everyone from under the tree. This year it was Becca though she took the easy way out and passed out multiple gifts at once rather than make multiple trips to the tree. She's a sneaky one that Becca. I think we all gave and received some very nice gifts this year. I personally was very proud of my gifts to Dad. I gave him a glass from BJ's Brewhouse; he'd wanted to purchase one a few months ago but they didn't sell any then. I also got him a bar of C.O. Bigelow Mentha soap. Finally I gave him an awesome new hat that you can't get just anywhere. You have to go to a special store and ask specifically for it.

That's right, a paper In-n-Out hat! I thought he'd appreciate it, after all he told me not to buy him anything so I kind of did what he wanted. I think he must have known that I was getting him such an awesome gift because he gave me a perfect addition to my kitchen. A pineapple upside down cake pan! It's awesome and can be used for molds as well so I just may make little Jello pineapples for giggles. I can't wait to make some little cakes.

That evening we drove down to Santa Barbara and had dinner at my aunt's house. Julia made so much good food: pork roast, vegetable shepherd's pie, a yummy salad, apple pie, and pumpkin pie. Luckily her recipe for shepherd's pie makes a lot of food so I was able to take some leftovers home with me. :) I really need to get a copy of that recipe. After dinner we all played charades, which was very funny and sometimes hard. We were using pre-created topics to act out and some of them were words of wisdom, such as 'a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush'. But the phrases weren't always correct--or at least we didn't think so. Some of them were just a little off, like one about crossing your bridges when you get to them. Maybe it was a translation issue or just poor grammar but for the most part we didn't force the guess of the 'wrong' answer but took the phrase wording that we were familiar with.

Stay tuned for details of how I rang in the new year. I'll give you a hint: it involves being very tired the next day.
Loves.