Christmas Recap

Christmas has come and gone and it was a lovely one indeed. Ken and I had two Christmases: one the Saturday before Christmas with my family and one on Christmas eve with his family. During my family's Christmas, we enjoyed a new tradition of "Bring Your Own Soup." Missy made cheesy broccoli, Mom made her famous beef n' noodles, and I made the Olive Garden Zuppa Toscana. All three were a hit. Corrina brought some fabulous breads, Connie and family supplied drinks, and Aunt Sheila and Uncle Roger brought some very yummy pigs in a blanket and little pickle wrap things that Mom and I couldn't get enough of. Grandma brought her excellent peanut brittle and I think some other desserts. In all, we ate well and enjoyed the company.

Gift exchange proved to be interesting yet again. Audra had fun opening all the gifts from family. Here's a shot of her with the purple socks that have a penguin on them and say "Chill Out" that I bought her. Last year, I bought her some socks with princess frogs on them and she liked them a lot. I thought I'd made it a tradition to get her a funny pair of socks each year. In this picture, she's decided that the socks are more fun on her hands.

During our other tradition of the "white elephant" or "bring something from your basement" gift exchange, we all laughed when some interesting gifts came out. People started the game off right by stealing gifts from others. My nephew Josh got a gold purse, which Missy promptly stole. Then someone ended up with a singing/dancing woodchuck from the movie Caddyshack which Scott stole away. I ended up getting a Yogo ball first, but Josh's girlfriend stole that from me and then I ended up with a half broken blender. Ken walked away with a tool box that had a bunch of old baseball cards in it. We all had some good laughs when Jeff brought out an old wig that he'd been given as a gag gift when he left his job at Musco Lighting (Jeff shaves his head). He tried it on and then so did Ken. It's interesting to see what he would look like with curly hair.

Christmas eve found us at Oelwein with Ken's family. A funny event occured when it turns out Lisa and I gave Ken and Matt the same gift: the Scene It Seinfeld edition. We tried to play the game later in the evening, but we experienced some DVD problems, so we settled for just watching a couple of Seinfeld reruns on TV. That's one thing you can always count on: somewhere in the world there's a Seinfeld episode on.

Ken and I were excited to give his dad an engineer's hat we found for him. His dad has been working a lot with his model railroads/trains, so we thought that would be a fitting gift. We think he liked it as he wore it the rest of the evening!

And finally, here's one of Teresa, Elizabeth, Lisa and me on our way to the local thrift store for our annual Christmas eve thrift store run. (Linda had to step out of the van to fill up on gas.) That tradition started a couple of years ago (for reasons I cannot remember), but we've made it an annual event now just because it was so much fun. We had a lot of laughs on the way there and back.

And now that those major holidays are over, Ken and I are trying to figure out a way to get out of town. We've planned a trip to Tennessee, but so far have been unable to make it out of Iowa. First there was the fog that engulfed Cedar Rapids and now we're dealing with an Ice Storm. We're going to try to get out of Waterloo today, but we'll see. I'll post the details as they become available.