Christmas 2011

Christmas is my favorite time of year. I love seeing the magic of the season come to life, from decorating the house, putting up the trees, setting up the Christmas village, baking cookies and simply just spending time with family.

This year was no different!

Our family traditions are as follows:
Christmas Eve is spent with my side of the family. It is a pretty low key night, but we have lots of fun! Mom, Sherri and Ryan usually arrive around 4 or 5 pm. We get dinner ready, and enjoy each others company as we prepare our meal. Usually we have some kind of seafood and steak! This year we had shrimp, crab legs, scallops, steak, cheesy potatoes, fruit salad, and all sorts of other good food. We always end up with way to much food! :)

We cleaned up the dinner mess and moved into the family room where Sherri and I sorted out presents for one another. Huge stacks around the room of gifts for one another. We laugh as we open presents and simply enjoy eachother's company while Christmas tunes are playing softly in the background.

Usually everyone packs up and heads out by 11pm or so.

Christmas Morning is definitely different than it used to be now that Zac is a teenager. He no longer gets up at 5am to run downstairs to see what Santa left him. Instead, I go in to his room to wake him up around 8am because I am so excited to watch him open his presents! We drag Shane out of bed to come down and open Santa presents! Sophie gets into the spirit too and loves opening presents, especially if there is something squeaky wrapped in the paper!

We usually head out around 9 am in our jammies to go to Nancy's house for Christmas Morning Breakfast! She usually has yummy pancakes or french toast, potatoes, and egg bake and coffee! Sharie and the girls are there too! So amazing at how fast they've all grown! After we ate breakfast, we opened presents and sat around and talked for a while.

This year, Christmas Day was a little bit different... Zac was given the opportunity to go back to Arizona to play in a baseball tournament with an Arizona team!!! What a great opportunity - too good to pass up! When we bought the airline tickets, it was about $200 more expensive for each ticket for them to leave after Christmas, so we decided that it would be better if they left Christmas day.

This changed things a little bit as far as our traditions go...

After breakfast and hanging out at Nancy's, the three of us headed off to the airport! What a sad goodbye.

My mom and I met at my sisters for some 'forgotten' gifts that were left in my mom's car the night before. We only stayed for about 30 minutes because Sherri was getting ready to host Christmas Dinner with Ryan's family.

I drove home, changed clothes, and headed out to Greg & Lynn's for Christmas dinner. They had the usual Turkey, Stuffing, gravy, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, and corn. It was delicious! As always, things are a little more chaotic there with all the kids and grandkids running around! This year we started what i hope is a new tradition! Every one brings a wrapped gift valued at no more than $5 and we play the dice game! It was a success! I think everyone had fun with it and i look forward to playing next year!

I love Christmas time and the opportunity to see family no matter how mellow or chaotic it is, it is always a memory building experience.

Next year, hopefully i will have my family join me for Christmas dinner :)

Christmas Cookies

Every year my mom, sister and I spend a full day baking cookies! Needless to say, there sure wasn't a cookie shortage around our house over the Holidays!

Pretzel Rods

Peanut Butter Kisses

Russian Teacakes

Sugar Cookies

Pecan Rolo Pretzels

Peppermint Oreo Snow Balls

Haystacks

Carmels

BLOG update

Just an FYI... I updated the blog dating back to September. Happy Reading!

2 week post op

Today, I had my 2 week post op appointment! They brought me back into the room, removed my soft cast and then did an x-ray.

Holy Man! Look at that new scar!

For the past couple weeks, I was trying to decide what color hard cast I would go with. I was thinking Red for Christmas, or Black for New Years! Of course, it will be blinged out, but I had to decide what color first!

When they called me back and brought me into the room, they had all the casting supplies ready to go. The nurse murmured, "Pink cast, right?" How could I turn that down??? LOL! Funny how well they know me! So naturally, I went with Pink! Decision made!

 Now, I just have to BLING it  up!

Nose Pierce

Nancy and I went out on a limb today and got our noses pierced! Isn't it cute?

Cookies!

This year marked the 6th year we've made cookies together -

what an AWESOME tradition!!

This year I surprised Lindsay and Shanon with homemade

aprons crafted up by my mom!

They are absolutely adorable with a touch of netting underneath

to give them just enough to look like a tutu without being one!

LOVE IT

This year we made a few more in the mix:

bacon & eggs -and- chai tea

 

chex mix -and- cutouts

green wreaths -and- monster cookies

oreo balls -and- peanut butter kisses

pretzel rods -and- toffee

mini peanut butter sandwiches

We were busy!! There was a lot of dipping, drizzling, mixing and sprinkling going on...

but it's always leads to a full day with the girls to catch up on life, have a TON of

laughs and enjoy some yummy treats together!!!

 

BEWARE Drivers!

On Thursday (12/1/11), Zac was so excited to go to school because he would be taking his permit test. He PASSED! So after school we headed over to the DMV to make it official!

After we got home, Grandma, Auntie and I all got to take turns with Zac as he practiced his driving skills around Ham Lake.

Since then, he tries to drive every chance he gets - so beware out there! 

Surgery Round 2

I had to have wrist surgery again, so went in on 11/28. This time they had to fuse 3 of the bones together with pins along with another bone graft. For the first 2 weeks I had a partial soft cast.

Oh Christmas Tree

Zac and Brandon climbed up and put the star on top of the tree ever so graciously!

We have a tradition of putting up the Christmas tree and decorating the weekend after Thanksgiving. Brandon came to stay with us for the weekend just to hang out with Zac. I'd love to say they helped, but this was pretty much the extent of it! LOL