Christmas With The Family!!

Belated Christmas wishes!!!  I hope your holiday was merry, and the big guy in the red suit brought you lots of goodies!

As has been the case the last six or seven years, mom and dad drove up to the cities, and we celebrated Christmas here.  LOVE having them here, and we were able to cram LOTS of fun into a very short time.

They arrived on Saturday (after the heavy snow and blizzard conditions that shut down large chunks of Iowa on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday).  We had dinner at Robin and Dave's, and had a great time catching up.

On Sunday, we went to City Church to see Emilie and Abigail's Christmas program, then went to Stillwater for lunch at the Freight House and spent a few hours antiquing on Main Street.

As soon as we got back to Robin and Dave's, I headed back to Eagan to get dinner ready, as everyone came over for pork tenderloin, red skin roasted potatoes, and home made multi-grain bread.  It was tasty, and we had a good time!

Dave and dad started putting together the tansu cupboard that I bought online.  I'm SOOOO glad they did.  I would STILL be working on it now, if they hadn't.  They DID have to come back on Christmas eve day for an hour to finish, but it was still MUCH quicker than if I'd had anything to do with it!!!

I headed over to Robin and Dave's so that we could go to the 2:00 Christmas eve service at Wooddale Baptist.  It was a lovely service.  I hadn't been to Wooddale for years, so it was great to be back.  The orchestra was brilliant, and the choir was beautiful.

We did our traditional beef fondue for dinner, finished with the turtle cake from Cafe Latte, and opened our "main gifts" to each other.  After that, we watched "Mirror, Mirror" (a good movie!), then, as is also tradition, I slept over, and we all went to bed.

On Christmas day, we opened "stockings" (I put that in parenthesis, because we LONG AGO graduated from stockings...we now each have a BASKET in which to put all the stuff we give each other!).  I have to admit that stockings is more fun to me than the main presents from the night before.  We do a PRETTY GOOD JOB of finding little gifts, ornaments, candy, and "stuff" for each other.

After stockings, we had our traditional brunch, and then Emilie and Davey and I went to see "The Hobbit".

After the movie, we went back to Robin and Dave's, Duane called to be picked up from the airport (he went home to North Dakota for Christmas), we had Fat Lorenzo's pizza for dinner, then he and I came home to exchange gifts.

A joyous holiday, spent with my dear family, and a good time was had by all!

Here's hoping YOU were able to enjoy a festive time with your loved ones too!!!