Christmas Recap

Warning-long post to follow. I started writing and just kept going, and going, and going…

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! I hope that your Christmas season has been as wonderful as ours. The 23rd through the 26th were busy, busy for Mr. P and me, but that it the price that you pay for being blessed with many family members and friends. Quick rundown of our holiday schedule:

23rd-Was supposed to be a fairly quiet day, but turned into some last minute deliveries of gifts to friends, baking desserts for our family get-togethers, and picking up some custom made gifts that were not finished until the last minute. (My awesome creative person who made the gifts had an unexpected death in the family two weeks ago which put her dreadfully behind. I had assured her that said gifts did not have to be finished before Christmas, but she insisted on finishing them, bless her heart. A heartfelt thank-you note is already in the mail to her.)

24th-Left early for my parents’ house, got there in time to help The Mama (as SIL and I have dubbed her) with dinner preparations, attended an early church service, then back to Mama and Daddy’s for dinner along with brother, SIL, niece, niece’s roommate, and my uncle. Awesome dinner of prime rib, au gratin potatoes, squash casserole, green beans, corn salad, strawberry salad, and rolls. And of course dessert-choice of red velvet cake, coconut cake, Toll House Pie, or Hershey Bar Cake. Snow was falling and the roads were getting slick as we went to bed, causing much anxiety on my part because we were supposed to head back home the next day to spend the rest of Christmas with Mr. P’s family. Although I would love the extra time with my family, I would feel terrible for Mr. P and his family if we didn’t see them on Christmas.

25th-Woke up to an inch of snow on the ground and no snow on the roads-a perfect white Christmas! Back to Mama and Daddy’s (Brother/SIL have an apartment attached to their house, which is ours when we are in town) to open presents with the family, followed by Christmas breakfast of egg casserole, cheese grits, hash brown casserole, sausage balls, ham, and rolls. We then packed up our gifts and lots of leftovers to bring home (thanks to The Mama), gave lots of hugs and we were back on the road. Arrived home, opened up our gifts to/from each other (which included a Nook for me-I’m in heaven!), spent a little bit of time just enjoying our beautiful tree and the fire in the fireplace, then headed across the road to Mr. P’s parents’ house. Spent some time with them before Mr. P’s sister arrived with her family, then it was on to Round 3 of the present-opening. After that, we had dinner then played board games the rest of the evening. Got back home around 11:00 and collapsed into bed! A very lovely albeit tiring Christmas!

26th-Up early for church, then back in the car-this time with MIL and FIL in tow. We headed to MIL’s brother’s place for one last family gathering. It is a two hour drive, so I broke in my Nook for part of the drive. After returning from there, we went back to MIL/FIL’s house for round 2 of board games-Apples to Apples and Trivial Pursuit being our choices.

27th-Mr. P and I did not leave the house all day-we were total couch potatoes as we recovered from the whirlwind weekend. Thanks to Mama’s leftovers, we didn’t even have to cook!

Mr. P and I are enjoying a low-key week. We’ve caught up on things stored in the DVR, watched more than one LMN movie (he would probably prefer that I didn’t post that, but oh well), cooked a little, done a few things around the house, and just enjoyed not having to be somewhere all the time. We will be back to our usual crazy schedule in due time!

I hope that you all have had a wonderful holiday season. I am truly sorry to see it end because I have enjoyed it so much this year-especially the time spent with our families. I could honestly forgo all of the presents and just spend the time with our loved ones. We are so blessed to have a good time when we get together with our families. Games, stories, jokes, etc. told around the table as we eat good food-that’s my kind of a good time!

TPP

P.S. I vowing yet again to be a better blogger-we'll see how that works out! ; )