Christmas Recap: Part 1

Lucky for me, my husband and both our families are just as Christmas crazy as I am.  We love coming up with ways to celebrate the holiday as much as possible, from dinners together starting as early as the 22nd to this year's new tradition, Christmas Movie Monday.  Every Monday from Thanksgiving until Christmas we have gathered at our house and whatever family can/wants to make it has joined us for a different theme and movie each week.  I think that after the fun we had this year, we will most certainly continue this tradition next year.

In Part 1 of the Christmas recap, I will post pics from our last two movie nights, as well as our first official Christmas celebration, at Mom and Dad's house on the evening of the 22nd.

I have posted photos from several of our CMMs, but the week of Christmas got so crazy that I didn't post any from our last 2 movies.  Our last scheduled movie was "Christmas Vacation."

Aunt MB and Uncie brought pizza, Jason and Mom bought the eggnog, and everyone showed up to watch. It was such a fun, family evening.

The next day, Tuesday, was our last day before Christmas break at school, so Jason and I decided that we might as well live it up and have one more movie night before all the holiday celebrations began with different sides of our families.  Linds and I picked up Chinese food on our way home from kickboxing, and Jason and Jared were waiting for us.  We watched "A Christmas Story," one of Jason's all-time favorites.  I think that even though we can't have Christmas Movie Monday all year, we definitely need a family movie/game night at least once a month.  I was reminded how cruicial time is this holiday season.

Now, on to our first "official" Christmas gathering.  We start celebrating on Dec. 22nd by having dinner and spending the night with my parents.  This year the dinner (and dessert) were delicious: seven-layer salad, corn pudding, potatoes, homemade mac and cheese, steak, and "Santa hats."

We gorged ourselves on delicious food, opened gifts, enjoyed watching Connor play with all of his goodies, and headed to bed, exhausted.

We woke up on the morning of the 23rd to another tradition: cookie baking and decorating.  Each year Mom, Linds, Jason, our Gran, and our cousins (and now Connor) come over to Mom's and create a batch of cookies to take to our other Christmas gatherings.

There is always an element of competition as to who can create the best cookies.  Not being the competitive type, I stuck with making only reindeer.

I think Linds may have won the competition, though, with her hand-crafted dinosaur.

I'll leave you with a little video (Thanks to Mom and Dad for the new video camera...we love it!) of Connor at Mom and Dad's.  He hasn't gotten it totally down yet, but this is his version of the ABCs.

Stay tuned for Part 2 of our Christmas adventures!