Christmas Wrap-Up

We had a great time on our trip to NJ to visit with our families for Christmas. We haven't gone up in a few years, because it's a long trip to make for a short stay, so when we do make it up, it's always a lot of fun. We went from house to house, visiting our relatives and saw our closest friends as well. But the real highlight, was getting to spend Christmas morning with my 2 year old niece, Khloe. While Christmas morning is always a lot of fun, it's way better with a little kid around; nothing matches the look on their face when they see that Santa arrived. And Santa brought quite the haul to my mom's house, for the 7 of us who were there Christmas morning!

We headed out the day after Christmas to come back and enjoy our last three days off quietly at home. Because while it's always nice to visit and see people, it's even better to come back home. ;) We hit a snag though, about 45 minutes into our trip when a bit of snow caused a massive pileup, entirely shutting down a huge part of the highway. We were more or less parked for 6 hours. We would creep forward every so often, but it took us 6 hours to go a total of 4 miles. So creep may even be a bit generous of a word. Eventually though, we made it through and Joe (because he is stubborn and doesn't like stopping if he isn't tired) got us home around midnight; after a whopping 16.5 hours in the car.

When I got up Friday, we had our gift exchange and late Yulemas together. Joe surprised me with scratch made pancakes for breakfast and a warm fire in the hearth. And we exchanged gifts, which I didn't take many pictures of this year, but we both were super thrilled with the reactions from each other as well as what we received. My highlights this year are a broom he made for me with a large handle from one of our fallen pine branches and bristles made from fallen twigs from various trees in our yard (I don't have a photo yet because, I've been slacking) and the original soundtrack to the movie Legend performed by Tangerine Dream on vinyl. It's been like my unicorn for years; I've only ever found 1 copy of it on CD when I was 14 and haven't seen it since. I've always regretted not picking it up but Joe, through diligent internet searching, found me a vinyl copy in great condition! And since our turntable has a usb output, we're going to put it on my ipod for in car listening. ;)

Tonight we'll farewell the old year and welcome in the new with friends and I'll post my welcomes and farewells here as well. I hope everyone had a fabulous holiday and stays happy and safe tonight!