happy holidays

Christmas was a whirlwind this year. Having so many people to visit over the holidays USED to be fun but it was a bit harder of a pill to swallow this year for some reason. Probably because we went to 6 households in a matter of 2 days. Each year Gregg and I have a few traditional rituals that we do with each of our families and we hate to miss them so instead of picking and choosing we do ALL of them – ALL OF THEM! On Christmas Eve we stopped over at Gregg’s mom’s house to have a delicious soup lunch complete with presents and lots of playing with the kids. We didn’t get any pictures because the kids were having too much fun playing with the toys and truthfully so were we. After we departed we headed back to my house to have our traditional xmas eve crab dinner. It was the yummiest it’s ever been….complete with homemade garlic bread and a fresh salad. SO YUMMY!!! Once our tummies were full we headed over to The Anderson’s for the annual Christmas Eve Party/White Elephant Exchange. It is always fun over at the Anderson household….everyone is in town, the house is loud with kids running around everywhere and I get to catch up with all of my brother and sister-in-law’s, I LOVE it. One of the BEST traditions we do at the house is the While Elephant gift exchange. There are always so many laughs and so many steals, it’s good clean fun. Once I reached my breaking point it was time to head home and get some sleep so we could start another busy day all over again.

Christmas Day started at 8:00am at my house. We woke up and opened presents. The best gifts this year were for my mom and dad. We had all pitched in for my mom and got her the big white 5 quart kitchen aid mixer that she’s always wanted, she was SO happy! Then it was my dad’s turn -my mom had us all pitch in for his gift which was the new ipad2…he was SHOCKED and I don’t think he’s put it down since he’s gotten it. Every night we learn a ‘new feature’ about it – thanks dad! Needless to say the morning was fun and full of gifts! We quickly got ready for the day, grabbed Har and headed over to Gregg’s parents house while my parents and brother hopped in their own car and headed to SF where we’d meet up with them for lunch at my Uncle and Aunt’s house. Amazingly and kind of oddly we showed up at the EXACT same time hahaha! We had a beautiful gourmet lunch that my aunt cooked. It was pretty amazing actually. We unfortunately had to skip out on dessert which made me SUPER sad but we had to be at Gregg’s grandparents house for dinner and presents (like we’ve done for the past 5 years). We left the house at 2:50 – perfect. As we got to the streets that lead up to the Golden Gate bridge we were in for our worst nightmare. WALL TO WALL GRIDLOCK TRAFFIC FOR TWO AND A HALF HOURS. I will spare you the gruesome details but let’s just say we missed dinner and arrived to the house at 6pm…instead of 3:30. OOPSIES! We still opened up presents (everyone already ate before we got there) and spent time with his grandparents talking and playing with all of our new presents and watched Harley (who was brought there by Gregg’s parents) and Keiko his cousin play. We had a LONG drive home back to Sac where I fell asleep of course, sorry Gregg! Overall it was a whirlwind of a weekend….something tells me it won’t be like that next year!