These last two weeks have gone by in a blur. A beautiful, fun, exciting, twinkly blur but a blur just the same. The Thursday before Christmas, Steven and I attended the memorial service for his grandfather. It was a very nice service at a military cemetery in Maple Valley. The sun was shining, the mountain was out and it was absolutely freezing but the service itself was lovely. We had dinner with Steven's family right after and then drove up to my mom's house for some last minute Christmas baking. We had about 5 different recipes that we wanted to get to but only had time to make the "Snickers" bars that night. They were fabulous, just as I remembered them being last year, and one very tired night when I was feeling super silly they were dubbed the "snickery-doo bars" so now that's what we call them.
Here we are wearing our Christmas aprons and unwrapping the caramels for the third layer of the bars. So, so tasty.
Steven and I kicked off the Christmas weekend with a breakfast date first thing Friday morning. I don't know why going out to breakfast seems so special to me but I just love it. We went to the Krain Korner in Enumclaw. The breakfast itself wasn't fabulous but the experience was fun and relaxing. The inside of that restaurant is super cute with all kinds of fun little decorations (just like any other diner of that sort) and it was decorated all Christmassy too.
Later that evening we drove over to Covington and had our Christmas with Steven's family. We ate spaghetti and opened gifts. Steven and I were showered with gift cards! Sushiland, Blue Highway, White House Black Market, Teavana and JoAnns. We also received a few fun "boy" DVDs. They're all movies that I really like and am glad to have, I just called them "boy" DVDs because we recently noticed that we don't seem to have much beyond the Disney, musical and Chick Flick genres. It's nice to have a few superhero movies thrown in to the collection. Steven's convinced the reason we were gifted with these particular DVDs is because maybe, just maybe, his dad was hoping he'd be able to borrow them ;) As it happens, our copy of Sherlock Holmes went home with him just he other day. We ended up staying late into the evening playing the new copy of Ticket to Ride that we bought for Karen and Ralph.
Christmas Eve morning Steven and I each opened a gift. Steven opened a "Keep Calm and Carry On" canvas wall-hanging and I opened the much anticipated gift of footie-pajamas. I shall save that story for another post. Then we each went our separate ways to spend time with our families. Steven spent most of the day at his parents' house and I went out to tea with the ladies.
Just like last year, Mom, Mandie, Tara, Grammi and I all went to afternoon tea at the Queen Mary. It was even better than last year! Since we went on an actual holiday they weren't very crowded at all and we had the table right next to the window so it was nice and bright. We each had our own kind of tea -- mine was called "Golden Monkey" -- and then shared these amazing towers of food: crumpets, scones, snickerdoodles, cream and jam, quiches, fruit, shortbread, gingerbread, pecan pie bars, cucumber sandwiches, chicken sandwiches, salmon sandwiches and, my favorite part, this fabulous peppermint cream stuff. I don't know what it was supposed to be paired with (it was on the sandwich tray but definitely wasn't meant to be eaten with those) but it was wonderful with the snickerdoodles and even just right off the spoon. 
I just love "girl time." Being married is the best but after being used to a life of living in a "girls only" house, it's nice to have these "girls only" dates every now and then.
Steven met up with us back at Mom's house after tea and we all went to church together. And then we had a surprise visitor -- Paigey!! She was spending the holiday weekend with her family in Bothell so she stopped by to hang out with us while we had dinner and opened gifts on Christmas Eve. It was such a treat! We've never had Paige in town at Christmas time and it was just really fun for me to share that time with her.
Digging in to our stockings. Santa came while we were at church again this year. He was very good to us! We got new head phones for our ipods and 4 seasons of Psych and Frango cookies and I got nail polish and all kinds of fun things. Steven even got a bottle of champagne! It wasn't actually in his stocking but sitting next to it on the floor by the fireplace.
Since Dad and his family were out of town for the holiday, Tebow spent the entire weekend at Mom's house. Can't say that her animals were too keen on this idea. In fact, I'd say they were downright angry about the whole situation, but they survived. It was fun to have him there. Evidently Tebow likes opening presents. He's pretty good about not chewing on things but this was just too much fun for him to resist. It was pretty cute.
We gave Apanda some sock-monkey pjs. I'd say she was pretty happy with them.
Steven and I were very blessed this Christmas. We got some really wonderful gifts from Mom including a Nook and a portable iHome. We've been wanted some portable speakers to plug our ipod into that we can take when we travel. This one is great -- the speakers are good quality and can get pretty loud but it still folds together and zips shut. Steven is in love with the Nook. He carried it around for 4 days straight. I was getting a little jealous of it. I'm not even kidding. I really was. But then I picked it up and learned how to use it and then Steven and I started playing Sudoku on it together. Big mistake. Fun but still a mistake. We were up past 1am two or three nights this week just laying in bed playing Sudoku together. It was really silly. The girls gave us some really fun stuff too including new mix CDs and a Scandinavian cookbook!
A little last-minute cookie decorating. This was a fabulous new recipe Mom tried. The cookies have loads of butter and cream cheese in them and then an awesome buttercream icing on top. She also tried another new recipe. Something like "mint-chocolate wafer cookies." These were pretty yummy too. It's like a chocolate cookie sandwich with peppermint icing in the middle.
Playing Tara's new Disney trivia game. As Tara was opening this gift she asked "Did you put glue on my gift?" I was really confused and said no, of course not. She said that it was sticky and then I remembered why. At this point she still didn't have the wrapping off far enough to see what was inside (she's a very careful gift opener) and I said something along the lines of "Oh yeah, I'm pretty sure it hasn't been used before but I got it from Goodwill and they always tape their games shut there so the pieces don't fall out." To which she responded "Oh, so it's a game?" Hahahaha! I laughed so hard. I was kind of embarrassed and felt like I had spoiled the surprise a bit but it was just really funny. Especially because earlier in the evening I was passing out gifts and Amanda told me to hand one of them to Steven and I said "this one?" and she said "No, the book's for Tara. Oops!" It makes me chuckle just thinking about it. Poor Tara, we spoiled all of her surprises :) I'm pretty sure she liked her gifts anyway.
Steven and I drove back home late Christmas Eve and spent Christmas morning at home together. We opened gifts and made cinnascones and hot chocolate and cuddled together in our new pajamas. Steven gave me these Disney DVDs that have a bunch of animated shorts from WWII. The government asked Disney to make cartoons to help sell war bonds and encourage people to pay their taxes on time etc. etc. There are even military training videos that were considered classified until just recently. We watched a few of those while we were eating breakfast Christmas morning. They were really interesting. It's so strange to see Donald Duck cartoons that obviously weren't made for children.
Steven also gave me a beautiful ring. It has a big pearl in the middle with a diamond on each side and I love it! On Christmas day I wore the pearl earrings that Steven gave me for Valentines Day the week after he proposed, the pearl necklace he gave me on our wedding night and the pearl ring I got this Christmas. It's so fun having this little collection of jewelry from Steven. Any time I wear any of it I am reminded all day long that I am loved :)
The rest of Christmas day was spent at Papa and Grammi's eating way too much food, playing with the puppy, and watching each other open gifts. Micheal and Danny gave us CDs and the Shadows Over Camelot board game. And Papa and Grammi gave us a gift certificate to Teatro ZinZanni. We've been wanting to go there for a long time and I'm so excited to finally be able to schedule that date!
So cute. Tebow fell asleep across one of Michael's arms and one of Tara's arms and neither of them wanted to move him so they had to help each other open gifts. It was really funny. They kept opening clothes and they would each have to hold up one side of the shirt so that they could get a good look at the gift they had received.
Grammi made a marvelous dinner, Scott made two fabulous desserts, and Mom made some delicious rum slush! All in all a very successful evening.
I was SO glad we decided to spend that night at Mom's house I was exhausted, as you can see (I was actually really comfortable like that), and that long drive home night after night was just getting really tiresome. Steven and I made a little bed on Tara's bedroom floor and had a slumber party :)But don't worry, the fun doesn't end there! Things slowed down a bit on Monday and Steven and I even got to spend the evening at home just the two of us. Tuesday night we had one more Christmas celebration with my dad and his family. We met at Maggiano's just like last year to celebrate Nathan and Grandma's birthdays, then went to Dad's to open Christmas gifts. Steven and I received another Teatro ZinZanni gift card! This was very, very unexpected but also really exciting. They change the show there every few months so we'll be able to go twice and see completely different shows. We're really looking forward to it.
Steven and I have spent most of this past week enjoying the Nook and our new Psych DVDs and all of the leftover Christmas cookies and trying to make the most of our time off together. I think we've done a pretty good job.
Last but most certainly not least -- Friends. Steven and I tend to live our life in extremes. Not by choice really, it just happens that way. Like with our schedule for example: we either get to see each other all of the time, or hardly at all depending on the week. And so it goes with our friends. As most of you live hundreds, and some of you thousands, of miles away we really don't get to see you all that often and then a whole bunch of you will be in town for "one week only" and we want to see everyone and hang out with everyone the whole time but we also know that we have to be respectful of your families and share you with them too (and your other friends, though I don't know why you need them when you have us...) and it really isn't easy. Lucky for us, we had quite a few of our favorite people in town this past week. We got to see Paige on Christmas Eve, we met up with Chad and Whitney for games and tea on Monday, we had sushi and played Phase 10 with Rachel on Thursday, and last night we had an absolutely marvelous time playing games and eating and drinking and eating and drinking and eating and drinking some more with Chad, Whit, Jeremy and Ronnie.
Chad and Whitney had been slaving away making an incredible Mexican meal for us.
Chad made these amazing empanada type things filled with beans and sausage. We dipped them in salsa and sour cream and they were just so, so tasty. Jeremy brought some fresh bread that he baked and he mixed up margaritas for us too. We had to take breaks in between snacks and drinks and appetizers and dinner. We played games while we waited for the fullness to subside and then we had tacos. Chad and Whit had slow-cooked the beef and chicken and everything just turned out perfectly!
Jeremy and Ronnie also made some pretty incredible cinnamon rolls for dessert. I don't know how I fit that in my tummy but I managed to find room. Us girls had gotten a little tired of the games so we left the boys upstairs to play another one and we went downstairs to watch Captain America. When Jeremy came downstairs with a plate of warm cinnamon rolls I just couldn't help thinking "What a good man." Haha! That was just a really happy moment for some reason. Whitney, Ronnie and I were all cuddled on the couch under blankets watching a movie and chatting about girly things and then Jeremy came in with a big smile on his face and delivered freshly baked cinnamon rolls with frosting dripping all over them and it was just lovely. Girls just need that sort of thing -- girl talk and fresh baked goods. Our day with these couples was a really fun way to end the holidays and I'm so glad we were able to squeeze in such a big chunk of quality time with all of them.
So there you have it. Our Christmas break in a very large nutshell (coconut maybe?). Can't say that I'm too excited to go back to work next week but I'm trying not to think about it too much yet. We do have a visit from Chelsea next weekend to look forward to and then Tim and Annika's wedding at the end of the month -- Let's say we just hit the ground running in 2012, okay?
I hope you all had a very Merry Christmas and I wish you the happiest of New Years. May this be the best one yet!
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