christmas 2013

I thought I would be stopping in today to tell you about a fun-filled weekend in La Crosse and Madison Wisconsin with my cousin and some college friends in from DC, but plans fell through last minute, and long story short, the Madison portion of our trip got cancelled (even though we had a non-refundable hotel room). We did however get to spend a night in La Crosse visiting Syd. However no pics were taken, so there's no proof of our 24 our jaunt to WI, right?

Since I have no weekend documentation and nothing else new to share with you, besides maybe some painting updates, now seems like as good of time as any to do a little Christmas recap. It is practically spring after all (lies, it was -11 without windchill when I left for work this morning), so I really should get on with it before the next holiday rolls along.

This year, like last, we ended up celebrating Christmas six times. We are at the age where we still get together with our grandparents/ extended families to celebrate since we are the oldest of the grandchildren and we don't quite want to give up the traditional celebrations with our parents. So we celebrate six times. This makes for a busy holiday season, but as far as I am concerned it is still totally worth the additional stress.

We get the best of all the worlds celebrating this way- we get a more sophisticated adults dinner on one side, and a crazier kid-filled potluck on another; we get to spend Christmas morning just us two making our own new traditions, yet we get to re-live some of our favorite childhood traditions with our parents; most importantly, we get to see and celebrate Christmas with all of our loved ones (at least the ones in the Midwest).

Here are some pics from our various Christmas celebrations. Unfortunately I didn't remember to whip the camera out at all of the gatherings (I'll have to round up some from the missing events if I ever want to make one of those family yearbooks I keep talking about).

Christmas morning, the last time at our current house.

 The puppies got to open their stockings first.

They really enjoyed their "candy canes."

David's turn next!

Our morning finished up with our breakfast. This year we opted for something that could be made ahead of time since we had to hustle along to my grandparents afterwards, a spinach and cheese strata.

At one of our extended family celebrations we tried out a new game (usually it's just the dice game). I was skeptical at first, but watching everyone (grandma included!) try to open up a tightly duct-taped present with oven mitts on was highly entertaining.

Our last celebration was with my parents and we finally got a family pic in (Winston wasn't too happy about it, but hey, at least Franklin doesn't look as awkward as he does in last year's).

 
David made us a delicious dinner- mussels in a white wine broth for an appetizer, followed by salmon and green beans for the main course.

I'm tired just from looking back through those pictures, although I could go for some of that Christmas food right about now.