Christmas

Here's a recap of Christmas festivities:

Since we would be out of town, and the brother's have strange work schedules, we decided to have C.T.'s dad, Kathy & Katie over for "Christmas" brunch the Sunday before. C.T. got me a really nice ($$) waffle maker, and we had a tried and true Alton Brown waffle recipe. So we had everyone over at what turned out to be noon. The table was decorated really pretty, with a red tablecloth and green cloth napkins. We had brunch and then opened presents. It was a nice way to do that side of the family - especially as our family is growing, perhaps this will become tradition?
That evening we met up with Sandra for dinner and A Christmas Carol play (a small production that turned out to be quite good!)

This year C.T. and I had Thursday and Friday off of work. So on Wednesday we packed up the car (after loading up the back, C.T. remarked "what are we going to do when we have the baby?" because we quickly filled up the honda) and headed to Minnesota. On Thursday we slept in, went to the dog park, tried furniture shopping (again...) and went for dinner at Tran, made a few last minute batches of cookies and played Ticket to Ride. C.T. blew us out of the water on that game - I don't know how he always gets the lucky cards!

On Christmas Eve we played a game of Monopoly before heading out to Grandma's house. There was dinner (no punch this year, John and I were debating whether she'd make it) and church - with candle-lit Silent Night - and cookies. We gave Grandma & Grandpa a scrabble game. They hadn't ever played, which was shocking! They really like crosswords and jumbles, so of course they took to this game quickly!

Christmas Day. Kayla, Steve and Syd arrived around noon and we ate the annual French Toast Bake (yum!) and then opened presents. We received some really nice things this year! Kayla gave us a painting of the Cherry in the Spoon. C.T. received a wooden box from dad. I got a stick blender which I am looking forward to using, and a lot of other cool things (A "penny dog" cookie cutter and a tiger hawk cookie cutter). I just love Christmas in Minnesota. They had many feet of snow up there. Penny loved it - she took the liberty of carving out running paths throughout the backyard. The tree looked beautiful as usual, and this year I took home some of my ornaments I've collected from Grandma or mom and dad over the years. It was kind of hard to break up all the threesomes :). After a trip to the dog park, the Pautsch's came over for steak dinner and gift exchange. Adam and Heidi were even in town! It was nice to catch up with them all. And then, it was over all too quickly. The next morning C.T. and I packed up again and headed on down the road.

We got in to Boone around 2:00 and ate a snacky dinner with Sandra and the brothers. We exchanged gifts and had a little dessert. We had planned on going to see a movie (like the last few years) but we missed the early show and 7:40 was too late for us. So back to Ankeny. And it felt really nice be home. C.T. shoveled the drive and I unpacked the car. We exhanged gifts before bed. I got him slipper shoes (without fur, do you know how rare that is?) and a Dave Matthews CD and a Dave Matthews lullaby tribute CD - which is pretty good. He was much too nice and got me some fun kitchen things, a tree skirt that he has plans to make into a family keepsake (our handprints, Penny's, the baby's...), and then he handed me a little jewelry box. I got teary. He got me beautiful pearl stud earrings. And he matched them with the jeweler to go with the existing pearl earrings I had from my grandma (I had lost one of the studs). Very sweet of him! We sat in the kitchen and listened to the lullaby CD and then went to bed. It was a lovely Christmas.

Can you believe she'll be here in less than 4 months! Wow!!! It was brought up quite a bit this year about how next Christmas will look with an 8 month old crawling around! And she was being cooperative so mom and kayla were able to feel her kick.