Five Christmases.

Steven and I had the usual marathon of a Christmas this year. We kicked things off with dinner at my dad's house on Sunday the 23rd. He cooked a turkey and I made the gravy. I'm normally quite good at gravy making but he didn't tell me that he brined the turkey in salt water and the gravy was pretty much just turkey flavored salt sauce. Yuck. Yuck, yuck, yuck. I tried to water it down and flour it down but I still didn't like it. We ate all kinds of goodies and Steven and I brought a growler of Jolly Roger Christmas Ale from the taproom. Dad had purchased another pumpkin tart from Whole Foods but it wasn't nearly as tasty as the one he bought at Thanksgiving. I have no idea what made that one so magical but it was fantastic! We exchanged gifts and then watched silly animal youtube videos late into the night.

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.

Christmas Eve evening we spent with Mom and the girls. We went to church together and Santa stopped by and filled our stockings while we were gone. We opened stockings and then enjoyed a lovely salmon dinner with rum slush and all kinds of cookies on the side (big surprise!). Mom made even more cookies including snickers bars, and turtle bars. She also made a super tasty salad. It's hard to get enough salad these days... We exchanged gifts after dinner, which was the part we had been waiting for all week!! Mom gave us all kinds of wonderful gifts including gift cards to Cirque du Soleil and Daniel's Broiler (Valentine's Day date!!), hot curlers for me, and a toolbox for Steven. But we gave her a little push out into the dating world. I mentioned to Mom a little while ago that we thought it was time for her to start dating and she mentioned a matchmaking service. We looked into it and decided to help her pay for the membership. We wrapped up a check with a little note of explanation that Steven, Mandie, Tara, and I signed and she was shocked!!! But not in a bad way. She was speechless and a bit timid but it seemed like a positive thing overall. Steven was pretty worried that we had done something wrong and he kept giving her hugs and rubbing her shoulders and saying "are you sure it's okay?" It was really sweet :) I love how excited he is for her and how eager he was to help her out with this. He is so generous and kind and it just melts my heart. The girls got us some really fun gifts too. Tara and Mom each gave me cookbooks, Tara gave me an apron, and Mandie gave us some stemless wineglasses and a bottle of wine. It was a really fun evening.

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.

Next stop: Papa and Grammi's. It was a typical Parducci/Sodoma/Lentz Christmas -- more food than anyone should ever consume at one time, amazingly generous gifts that take 4+ hours to open, an incredibly entertaining game (or 5 games) of Catch Phrase, and some truly great company. I think the most successful gifts were given to Danny. He was thrilled with the 4 bags of candy cane flavored pop rocks that my mom gave him and quickly consumed all of them, and was also surprisingly happy with the toilet plunger that Steven and I had wrapped up for him. Amanda had to be at the airport by 4:30 the next morning so she and Steven and I headed out early but I wish we hadn't! Apparently Papa and Grammi joined in the Catch Phrase fun later in the evening -- they never play with us! We really missed out. We'll have to get them to join in a little earlier next time.

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.