Christmas
Ok, so we’ve been super busy the past 2 weeks, but finally I can sit down and write a post about the holidays. We spent this past Christmas at my husband’s family’s house, which was loads of fun. I, of course, missed my parents and my sister, but I had a really good time. I really enjoy visiting Chris’s family.
Flights to and from Houston were ok. There was a big storm up in the northeast the day we left, so there were some delays even in our area in the south because of incoming planes, but we made it out nearly on time and luckily, Kevin, my brother in law, who was flying from New York made it out – quite late, but at least he made it. The flight down was fairly smooth, but we had a screaming, kicking kid behind us. Literally kicking our seats. Which, when you have a stomachache and sinus pressure making your teeth hurt, is not pleasant or fun. Really cute kid, but geez, I wanted to throw it out the emergency exit by the end of the flight. The flight back was a bit bumpy and we had a pretty rough landing. It was like, Silent Hill foggy out and nearly midnight when we landed. I actually thought we were still fairly high up in the clouds until about 5 seconds before we landed – we were up in the air, I saw a light emerge from below and thought we were finally through a thick cloud, realized it was really big for how high I though we were and then, bam, we hit the ground. Judging by how hard we landed, it kind of seemed like the pilot had just discovered how low we were too. I imagined him turning on the mic and yelling “Oh my gosh, the ground!!” As always, I flailed about and grabbed the seat – which Chris makes fun of by saying that I saved the plane by grabbing on to it.
Anyway, visiting Chris’s family was really great. I love getting to spend time with family. There was a lot of video game playing, 3 trips to El Jarito, the local Mexican restaurant (and the best I’ve ever had for the record), and just some good quality time with people we love.
It’s really neat to see how other people celebrate Christmas. Now, my family has a pretty busy Christmas routine – Christmas Eve, we go out to a nice restaurant for dinner, and sometimes go look at lights on houses around town. On Christmas day, we get up at like 7 am (except for that one year I didn’t…I was a butthead that year), open presents, my dad cooks breakfast and we eat, then we realize we forgot the stockings (don’t ask how we always forget. Though I sometimes think we don’t all really forget. I think it’s mainly just a fun “oh yeah, we still have stockings to open!”), then we sit around for a short time and relax before showering and driving an hour and a half to my aunt’s house for the day. It’s a lot of fun, but it’s also very busy.
This year, we had wine and cheese (and fabulous crab cakes, Kevin) on Christmas Eve followed by a candlelight service at their church, which was very pretty. Christmas day was much more laid back than I’m used to – we just kind of woke up whenever (though I made sure I was up at a reasonable hour so everyone wasn’t waiting forever for me), Kevin and Chris’s dad made breakfast, we made some phone calls to people to wish a merry Christmas, opened presents around noon, and played Wii until dinner (we also had fabulous deviled eggs made by Kevin, hehe). Again, while I love my family’s traditions, it was also really nice to have a pretty relaxing Christmas.
Me and Chris in front of the tree
Family 
A Star Wars ornament. I'm told it's called a Lambda. It plays the Star Wars theme song when you push it's button. The button was pushed often.
I hope everyone else had a wonderful Christmas, too! Merry Belated Christmas!
Deck the halls
Well, the tree is up, the decorations are up, and the lights are up. Christmas is one of my favorite times of year. It just makes me happy (frantic shopping and bad drivers aside). I think I may have gone a bit overboard inside this year, but oh well. Growing up, we always had tons of decorations in the house, so I just love decorating the house now.
The mantle with our stockings. Buffy gets one too!
My mom has a collection of Santas that she lines up on a little half wall between the kitchen and dining room and it’s becoming aparant that my collection will be reindeer. I don’t line them all up, but I do have quite a few, big and small.
Just a few of my reindeer. Chris doesn't like the sparkly gold one. He thinks it looks like it has balls. They're gems!!
Some more of my reindeer. Also Wellington and Wilbur, the fish. I think Wilbur is hiding.
I got a few new ones this year, and this one is my favorite of the year:
I do have a few Santas lined up, which makes me think of my mom.
So, there's like 7 Santas here. My mom's Santa ledge has like 35 in about the same amount of space!
While I put up most of the indoor decorations myself, I make sure Chris helps with the tree and the lights. I’m not sure if it helps him get into the holiday spirit, but I like the tradition (and the help with the lights…). Our tree is kind of small, but we don’t have a big area for a big tree (it would be great if we could fit a nice big tree into our 2-story living room, but I think that would involve removing large pieces of furniture or setting up the tree in front of the TV). It’s also fake, but that’s ok. It has the benefit of being prelit, so the lights are all evenly spaced. Also notice we have no ball ornaments on this tree. I tried that once. The cat had a field day with the ornaments and by the end of the season, there was none left on the tree. So we stick with non-rolling ornaments. Buffy does still love sitting under the tree (often under the treeskirt as well) and occasionally she’ll bat at something on the tree (and once or twice has done a full speed running jump at the tree), but we keep non-breakable stuff near the bottom, so it’s all good.
Complete with a Chris head growing out the side! (We take lots of pictures like this where Chris is hiding, with just his head poking out)
It was amazingly cold when we put up the lights (this is the South, isn’t it supposed to be warm here??), but we got them all up. We bought a few extra things after Christmas last year, but the set of net lights we bought turned out to have a wire that wasn’t connected to the rest of it, making only part of it work and making me nervous that it was going to short out and set the house on fire, so we threw those out. Also, I keep forgetting to get another outdoor extension cord. Also, I’d really like expand next year to add some more icicle lights to the garage and maybe some more lights to the bushes in front of the porch.
I'd really like to expand next year - doesn't the garage look lonely?
Anyway, all this decorating has sure gotten me into the Christmas spirit. That and all the Trans-Siberian Orchestra I’ve been listening to!
