Christmas Eve, our alarms went off a little earlier than I'd generally prefer while on break, and we were on our way to Steven's parents' house. We exchanged loads more gifts (Karen gave me all kinds of sprinkles and baking things and a JoAnns gift card and Steven received a really nice bag for his gear at work), ate lots more cookies, played 7 Wonders 2 or 3 or 4 times, and had lunch with some of Steven's extended family. Steven's mom always has their home all decked out and Christmassy and it's quite cozy and festive. She made some really good cookies too -- some super soft chocolate cookies that were sandwiched together with cream cheese frosting in the middle. Yum.
Tari got a new mask.
Mandie got a new scarf.
Charlie and Chessie got new harnesses (he normally would be squirming away from her but he's chewing on his new parrot toy that has been stuffed with catnip).
Christmas morning was relaxing -- just the two of us at home. We wore our Christmas onesies from last year and drank hot chocolate and opened all of our gifts one at a time. Steven got me a new apron, and a thermos, and a cookbook, and a tea pot and two tea cups, and a pocket knife (with pen and flashlight -- so practical!), and a really cool salad dressing mixer bottle thing. I made him a couple of blankets with firefighter fleece on one side and flannel on the other side. I thought this would be his favorite gift but he actually preferred his new game -- Timber Peak -- an extension of the zombie game we like to play. I think the best part of our morning was when we went out to breakfast. This is the 4th year of our Christmas breakfast tradition but I didn't realize that we hadn't actually done it on Christmas Day. I guess all of the other years it has been on the 23rd or 24th so when we got in the car to go to breakfast, we quickly realized that nothing was open. Until we drove by Plum Delicious. They definitely looked open and the paint on their window said they served breakfast, so we pulled in. I always thought that place was an Asian restaurant but apparently it's a family owned diner. Steven described it as a combination between Denny's, Shari's, and a Pancake House. The food was actually pretty good (corned beef hash and fried eggs for Steven and a waffle for me) but it was just amusing to us that we were in some random diner off of Sunset that sells their table top space as advertisement space and looks like an Asian restaurant from the outside. We were thoroughly entertained. The good part about the advertisements on top of the table was that we found out about a dance barn in Renton and I think we're actually going to check it out sometime :)
I'm wearing Steven's new apron :) I believe that was a gift from Danny. Like my new earrings? Santa gave them to me. |
We had a wonderful Christmas and we are so blessed to have had all of this time off together. We're looking forward to having Chad & Whitney here for the last couple nights of their vacation before Steven has to go back to work on Tuesday.