Christmas Recap

Get ready for a loooong post!

What a busy weekend! I always expect the holidays to be nice and relaxing, and am always surprised when they’re crazy and action packed. Don’t get me wrong, I loved every minute of it — but I will also be the first person to tell you that even with four days of no work — I’m exhausted!

First, I want to make sure that each and every one of you had a magical holiday!

Let’s recap my long weekend, shall we?

Thursday

Alex and I headed over to my mom’s house for the day. Baking was on our agenda, and that’s exactly what we did. We made multiple batches of my mom’s famous peanut butter cookies. We also stopped by the store to grab a few ingredients for my blueberry crumbly recipe that I made for Christmas. While on the way to the grocery store, we decided to creepily drive by our future home. Luckily the sellers weren’t home so no one was freaked out when we drove by three times.

We put our stockings together.

Stuffers

And we also watched A Christmas Story by the fire.

Love this movie

We headed home after we ate some homemade burgers. Thankfully my brother, Justin, was home so he could brave the cold outside and face the grill!

Friday

Christmas Eve started with getting out of bed early to prepare my dish for Christmas. I prepped two blueberry crumblies on Friday morning and cooked them both on Christmas morning so they would still be fresh. Once I was finished with that, Alex and I headed over to our apartment gym for a quick run.

After we showered and had breakfast, we were out the door again! We drove down to Virginia to spend the day with Alex’s sister and nephews. We had such a great day! We enjoyed watching the kiddos open their gifts and had a heck of time trying to put the “some assembly required” toys together.

So excited!

Getting his baby fix

We had an absolutely amazing dinner! We had delicious flank steak, garlic mashed potatoes, cooked rum carrots, a cheesy biscuity-bread pudding, and fresh green beans. I completely cleared my plate, which as anyone can tell you — never happens! We headed to church to watch the children’s Christmas Pageant. The church was completely packed, so we ended up on baby duty most of the evening.

One unfortunate thing about Christmas Eve is that we had a really unhappy dog. We decided to bring Hunter with us to hang with my almost sister-in-law’s dogs. Hunter has gotten along with every other dog he has ever met. For some reason though, he was just not feelin’  it. He was crying, shaking, and barking most of the day. He even made himself sick with an upset stomach. It was sad… but he’s feeling better now!

Christmas

Christmas morning started out with me acting like a child. For some reason I was so anxious to get out of bed! At 7:30 I asked Alex if he wanted to go back to sleep. In which he clearly responded…. “yes.” I continued to toss and turn for 15 minutes until he finally realized that he wasn’t going to get back to sleep. We took the pup for a nice long walk in the flurries and came back in to make a fresh pot of coffee.

Then we exchanged gifts. We set a $300 limit for each other considering our wedding expenses and that new house thing. We both went over the limit. Some things that I received from Alex include:

• A beautiful white gold ring to replace my aluminum ring that broke.
• A new bathrobe from Restoration Hardware.
• A brand new cook book!
• A BLUETOOTH! (so I can stop breaking the law when I drive!)
• And smaller things like SmartWool socks (the best!) and movies 🙂

I gave Alex:

• A garage stool
• A gas-pump alcohol dispenser
• Daniel Tosh’s stand up comedy routine
• A pancake pen and molds from Williams-Sonoma
• And finally…. A 12 in compound miter saw with a stand.

Do you think he likes it?

It's hard to tell?!

So now we had this sitting in our living room for a day…

How big is this thing?? Geez!

Even Hunter wants to know how long we have to live with this giant..

Um Mom? What is this?

After we exchanged gifts, we got ready and headed to my mom’s house. We had a delicious breakfast of egg casserole and my grandmother’s famous Christmas coffee cake. After my brother, Chris, and his girlfriend, Katey, got to my mom’s house — it was time to open gifts!

Some highlights include a charm bracelet from my mom and a few beads from my mom, brother, and cousin! I was completely surprised!! Among other thing, I also got some snow boots, work clothes, and more SmartWool socks! I was really spoiled this year with all my gifts and felt so fortunate.

Now I better get started on my thank you cards!!

After we finished at my mom’s house, we headed to my grandmother’s for the day. We had such a good time socializing with the family!

Here are a couple pictures from the day…

At my mom's

You can never get everyone at the right time…

My fam

And finally… one of a few of us girls…

A new pose this year 🙂

After we got home on Saturday, we were completely exhausted. Our neighbor, Kim came down to hang out and we all just chilled. Literally, Kim and I flipped through cookbooks and Alex studied his new saw manual. We weren’t even talking. We were dead tired.

After Kim left, I got kind of emotional. I felt an overwhelming sadness that my dad wasn’t there on such a special day. Alex was able to make me feel better and we finished off the night by watching Frosty the Snowman in bed.

Sunday

We started Sunday off by making these delicious Breakfast Bowls. We were pleasantly surprised by how yummy they were! Then we had some errands to do. We dropped off my new ring to be sized, we picked up a part of Alex’s new saw, we grabbed some dog food, stopped by REI, and even got on sale Christmas decorations for next year.

We got home and turned football on. We watched the Green Bay/Giants game.

Alex is a GB fan.

Kim is a Giants fan.

Soooo… that was fun.

I made some wings (recipe to come). Later on Alex and I watched Four Christmases to conclude our Christmas season. Then we relaxed a bit before bed.

Now I’m at work.

Pouting.

Like Hunter

Hope you had a great holiday!