Well the holidays came and went in the blink of an eye, as usual. We had an awesome few days of present opening, stuffing ourselves, and realizing that at this rate, we very well might accumulate everything on our registry and more before the wedding.
Christmas eve:
My parents were still frantically finishing their Christmas shopping. My brother was frantically finishing his Christmas wrapping, while watching both dogs (Cooper AND Whinnie) who were of no help. Todd was frantically trying to finish up everything at work, and get home in time to wrap the remainder of his gifts. I was not at all frantic. (Lucky me!) So in everyones frantic-ness (minus mine...though I was feeling a little ill from the excitement of girls night the night before), we decided to all get together late in the evening for Christmas eve dinner. So, once again, Todd's HKM duties paid off and he took us out for an awesome dinner at Coastal Flats. I, of course, ordered the lobster roll, my most favorite item at all of the GAR's and nearly stabbed Todd in the back of the hand with my fork when he attempted to sample part of my dinner. My mom commented that Todd was not going to want to take me to any of his future work functions because of my crass eating/food-sharing habits. But seriously, take note -- DON'T touch my lobster. If he had gone for a french fry, we wouldn't have had an issue. Regardless, Christmas eve dinner was fabulous and we all waddled home too full and too tired to communicate.
Christmas morning:
We had to wake up early considering there were 2 tons of presents in the basement to be opened. That, and Todd's stocking was 3 feet tall (geez, I'm a good wife! ha) so we needed to get a move on. Present opening was fabulous...we got mom some new clothes, boyds bears and yankee candles...we gave dad some golf stuff and a mini Riddell Redskins helmet signed by the original Hogs (yes it was pretty bad ass)...we gave Matt more Red Sox stuff than I can even remember...including an awesome new collection of Red Sox yearbooks...and we received SO much awesome stuff I can't even begin to list it all...but I will note that Santa was VERY good to us and brought us a full 4 piece set of gorgeous new luggage, which will be put to good use in July!! In addition I (I suppose I should say WE) received new phones, a wireless router, a brewstation (Todd is claiming this as his and only his, but I'm sure I'll get to use it at some point ;), some calphalon cooking utensils, some cookbooks, and a ton of other great stuff both for the house and ourselves. Todd and I ended up giving each other the same Michigan blanket (great minds, ya know?) and he gave me a Blackberry (i'm obsessed...LOVE IT!) and I gave him some new golf wedges (too bad he can't use his present until the spring). It was a fabulous morning!
Christmas afternoon:
We all got cleaned up and in our Christmas finest (hilarious, my dad had on a t-shirt that said something about the three stages of a man's life: believes in santa, doesn't believe in santa, looks like santa") and headed to my Aunt Lauri & Uncle John's house. Their house smelled (and of course looked) amazing. The food was delicious and the company was fantastic. Gramma had us do a scavenger hunt for our "magic number" which turned out to be a page in a book, which containted a special gift! By the end of the evening, I was so full it hurt, and I was so exhausted I knew I wasn't going to be good company for our evening road trip.
Christmas night:
We headed home, picked up Whinnie, picked up the presents to take down to Todd's mom & dad, went by Todd's restaurant so he could do some prep work for the next day, and then got on the road headed for Hampton. We got into Hampton around 2am, and while Whinnie and I had slept the whole way there, Todd was deliriously exhausted and literally fell into bed. But we woke up the next morning amped for Christmas round 2!
Day after Christmas:
We got up and opened presents with Todd's mom. She gave us some beautiful Michigan dishes, which I'm psyched about using next football season -- and lots of Christmas decor that will be put to good use next year when we're in our own place. It was a great morning, and we all got cleaned up and headed to Keegan's, a cute Irish pub, for lunch. After lunch we headed back to Todd's mom's house and were all pretty tired so we took a short nap. We woke up, loaded up the car, and headed to Todd's Uncle James' house to exchange gifts and visit with his dad. Since we had Whinnie with us, we didn't want to leave her in the car, and brought her in to Uncle James' house, where she immediately took to chasing Claude (the cat). Claude and Whinnie did not become fast friends...but it was entertaining to watch their hiss/bark/chase routine. After that short, but nice visit, we jumped back on the road to head back to my parents to pick up Cooper (Matt & Marissa were in Memphis so we watched Coop for a few days), and finally get home and fall back into bed exhausted from the 2 days of Christmas fun, food and family.
Then last Saturday we went to another Wizards game in one of the suites, with Jason & Corey and Jay & Larissa. Despite the on-set of my cold, it was impossible to have a bad time with all of these fantastic people...and beer...and chicken fingers. Larissa and I didn't watch much of the game, but we did get to eat a sugar-overloaded s'mores boat. Whoever on the Wizards marketing/food distribution team invented the chocolate-syrup-marshmallo-fluff-one-graham-cracker-mess-of-a-dessert should be fired. If I had brought a child to the game, sat in a regular seat with no table to eat off of, and indulged said child with a s'mores disaster, that child would have been one sticky mess and the metro ride home would not have been pleasant. However, that did not prevent Larissa and me from enjoying the aforementioned marshmallow fluff...even if it did give us a sugar high. It was a great time...and Todd and I didn't get separated on the metro, which is always a plus in my book.
Our New Years eve was extremely low key as Todd had to get up at 2:00am to head into work on New Years day...so we had Chipotle (best NYE dinner ever...no joke!) and watched Extreme Makeover home edition (and I cried)...and went to bed prior to midnight. Thank you to everyone who sent me Happy New Years texts...sorry for not responding, as I was asleep. Special thanks to my mom who sent me 8 Happy New Years! texts. You were the winner :).
Which brings us to this weekend, when we will be having our own special New Years celebration in NEW YORK CITY!! We drive up to Scranton tonight to spend the night with the Schwass'...then tomorrow morning we drive up to NYC. We see Avenue Q at 2:00pm (they couldn't keep the show a secret for long!!) and then we'll tear it up in NYC and spend the night in Times Square (we couldn't keep the rooms a secret!!) So now I'm just counting down the minutes until we get on the road. Hope I packed enough layers because it's going to be COLD in New York!
HAPPY NEW YEAR, blog stalkers! 2009 is going to be a great year... :)
No comments:
Post a Comment