Holiday Happenings.

The fun Christmassy part of this month has gone by incredibly fast. This is another one of those years where I feel like I kind of missed out. I didn't get to watch all of my movies. I hardly had time to bake. My Christmas cards were unbelieveably late. And so on and so forth. There have been little pockets of holiday fun though. Heather and I went shopping a few weekends ago. We started the evening with dinner and drinks at McCormick's and finished just in time to enjoy Snowflake Lane. She had never experienced the fake snow, and stilt-walkers, and snowflake drummers, and free candy cane tootsie pops so it was fun to share that with her.

That same weekend I attended an Ugly Christmas Sweater Party all. by. my. self. Aren't I brave??? I kind of shocked myself. It was a night that Steven was working and I wouldn't normally go to something like that alone but we really want to be friends with the couple who hosted the party and I wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to hang out with them.

The whole time I was thinking, Oh my goodness - I'm just not this much fun! They had a photo booth and everyone was taking crazy silly pictures and drinking a lot and I was a little out of my element but I think I did pretty well. I took a few shots (both from the whiskey bottle and in the photo booth) and tried not to be too much of a dud. I even won third place in the ugly sweater contest! And everyone loved my fudge. So overall it was a success.

3rd place! Not Uglier or Ugliest, just plain Ugly. (I actually kind of like my sweater but don't tell anyone I said that)

We had our Christmas party a couple of weeks ago and we had such a fabulous time!! It was perfect. There were only four couples (including us) and it was very comfortable and relaxed and entertaining. I had the genius idea to put frozen pomegranate seeds in the rum slush -- beautiful, crunchy, and tasty. I loved it.

I kept this party super low key and chose not to actually prep anything. I mostly just served chocolate, which is all you really need, right?

The gift exchange was a blast. I even got a sparkly red Justin Bieber ornament! Steven received some Sounders slippers and he wears them all over the house -- we had to fight for those. We finally lost the flip flop on a stick this year, but I think it went to a good home :) Rolf was pretty excited about it! Steven and I already have our white elephant gifts for next year, now I just have to make sure that I store them somewhere that I'll remember them.

Chad and Whitney are in town and we've already gotten to see them a few times. We met up with them and Scott & Chloe for drinks and games last Thursday. What a fun group of people! I was grumpy and tired after school and honestly didn't really want to go but, of course, it was a very enjoyable evening.

We spent the entire next day at the Mayers' house playing games and eating and drinking. Jeremy and Ronnie joined us for dinner and dessert and it was nice to see them too! They're moving to Utah next month so it looks like we'll have to plan a trip out there sometime in the nearish future.

I spent Saturday baking cookies with Mom and Tara while Steven played board games and ate sushi with Chad and Jeremy. We made snowball cookies, and English toffee, and cutout cookies, and coconut bonbons, and all kinds of yummy stuff. It was nice to catch up on the holiday baking and it is kind of fun to do it all in one go. Next year I have to help Mom clean up the kitchen -- I left it a complete disaster! Not sure how I managed to go the whole day without taking any pictures though...

On Sunday we drove into Seattle together and I went to holiday tea with Mom, Grammi, and the girls, while Steven went with Scott to get a tattoo. We've been talking for a long time about getting ring tattoos under our wedding rings. Steven had to take his ring off a lot at work and when he's working out and when he goes climbing and he was really wanting the tattoo so he wouldn't have to worry about the ring so much, though I still insist that he wears it anyway... I know, how unreasonable! He decided that it would be best to get the tattoo over the Christmas break so that it has a couple of weeks to heal before he has to go back to work. It looks pretty cool. I want one too but also kind of not. I liked the idea of getting marriage tattoos together but now that he already has one, I honestly can't see myself going by myself to get one. So there's that.

Here's the only picture I took at tea.

Thankfully, my mom took a few.

Maybe next year Amanda and I should sit on the same side of the table...

Mom asked why I wasn't taking pictures of the food but I figured I didn't need to since the pictures would look exactly the same as the ones I've taken the past two years. The food was amazing, as always, and we had a really nice time. Steven picked me up after tea and we went with Scott & Chloe to the Jolly Roger Taproom in Ballard. It was a fun and relaxing interlude in our chaotic Christmas weekend. We really enjoy being around them.



This post is getting a bit long and I'm only halfway through the holiday happenings so I'll wrap this one up and put all of the family stuff in the next post.