To recap

Hey blog family!  Happy day after Christmas to you.

Today marks three years since my Grandmother passed on.  In the past, this was a very, very hard day for me.  It felt really unfair the way that she was taken.  I anticipated that this year would be simply impossible, given the last week and a half.  However, I find myself reflective today.  Remembering who she was, what she meant to me, what she meant to others.  I wrote about my Grandmother in this blog post, and while it's about her favorite holiday, Easter, I think it does a great job of summing up the woman she was, and how I feel about her.

Now I feel like I can move on to brighter subjects... what do you say?

Our Christmas was about as good as it could get.  On the wedding blog today, I talk about how I got to have best friend time on Christmas Eve with my maid of honor, V.  You can hear about the crap we bought over there, but I saved our favorite funny pictures for this spot right here.

We could not get enough of these color-your-own masks.  There were some very annoyed women who kept brushing by us, but we just didn't give a whoop.

On Christmas day, we went to my parents' house.  My parents always make the best food, so we got up EARLY and drove in the SNOW to their house for breakfast.  Here is a picture from their back deck

I know some of you are hating me right now.  But I hear that most of the country had a white Christmas, or has snow now, so I hope the snow-envy isn't too widespread.

After breakfast, we did stockings.  I had to cajole my parents into doing stockings this year by promising that Ammon and I would get them stockings in return.  Jackpot!  My mom needlepointed our stockings when we were little.  Each one took her almost 2 years to complete.  It's insane!  I have wanted to do the same, but that is a lot of work, people!

There is so much else to say about present time, but I feel like the unwrapping part deserves its own post.  So we'll just conveniently skip over that right now and say that my parents spoiled us kids rotten this year.  So rotten.

The good thing about Christmas is that we all hang out and don't argue that much for the whole day.  Ammon took advantage of having internet, and caught up on his web-surfing.  I knitted and counted cross-stitched (both craft hobbies I have very recently picked up), and in general we just milled around until dinner time.

Now, Christmas dinner is something special at their house, and I wish I'd gotten a picture, but I didn't.  My dad always does a black pepper crusted prime rib with sage jus, and my mom does yorkshire pudding and green beans with pearled onions.  We also have cheesecake.  Homemade cheesecake, to be exact.  And wine.  It would be wrong to not mention the wine, this year is was a 2007 Merlot from Three Palms.  I'm told it's an excellent wine, but as I mentioned to my parents, I can't appreciate the differences that create an "excellent" wine.  They frowned at me when I admitted this, but unlike them when they were my age, I don't live in wine country, CA with ready access to wineries for weekend tastings.

Did I ever mention that we used to go to wineries on the weekends when I was little?  We did.  It was a blast, there are so many cool things to play on/around at a winery.

We decided the night was pretty much done when Ammon passed out on the couch at 6:40pm.  It was just like the 7 year old kid who gets so excited for Santa that they don't get any sleep, and then they eat too much candy from their stocking during the day and pass out halfway through dinner.  Poor guy didn't even make it to the cheesecake.  So at 8:00, with the Subaru loaded down with our new gifts and some paper towels from Costco, we made our way home.  Our bellies were full, our hearts were full of love, and despite all of the sadness this season had brought, we could both agree that it had been a good day indeed.