Friday, December 30, 2011

Christmas with Nana and Pop

I am a creature of habit and I love that our Christmas mornings have fallen into a wonderful, predictable pattern. After present-opening and a not-so-healthy breakfast of candy canes at home, we head over to Nana and Pop's for a hearty breakfast of Carolyn's eggs (recipe from my parents!), Jess's famous biscuits, and sausage/country ham/bacon, plus some fruit (my attempt at making Christmas a little healthy). Then we all gather around the tree and the chaos of opening gifts for 10 people ensues. But first, there is some fun with the Santa hats. Will has his Grinch face on!Pop proclaimed the theme this year to be olive oil, and we did indeed get some really nice olive oil. There were actually quite a number of food-related gifts this year, which is not surprising since we all love to eat and cook! Pop gave his boys beakers to accurately measure the ingredients for the perfect martini. These beakers are also useful for completing science experiments (Will got three science kits this Christmas!). Remember when I said it was a Tabasco Christmas for Gene? This huge bottle of vintage Tabasco was personalized with Gene's name on it.Gene made custom labels with our family name at Water2Wine. What a fun gift for Pop and Mike!I got some workout DVDs and a gift card to my pilates studio and Nancy got a yoga mat (or exercise carpet, as Mary calls it) so we can counter-balance all the foodie gifts.How did Santa know we were almost out of band-aids?? The perfect gift for the many scrapes and scratches and invisible boo boos at our house!Mary's new computer. Baby Michael woke up from his nap to join the fun. I think his favorite thing was the crinkly wrapping paper.A kite from Pop! We can't wait to try them out on the next windy day. Henry modeled my new hat from Aunt Jess. Mary helped Nana open the annual photo book from our family. We had a wonderful Christmas with Nana and Pop and ended the day with a fabulous dinner for the entire family (including my parents). Christmas was a whirlwind, as always, but it was a wonderful whirlwind!

No comments:

Post a Comment