Christmas and the Aftermath

Morning people,
  I had to go for a cup of coffee this morning.  It's rare (within the last month) that I will take a cup of coffee because tea has been able to satisfy me.  But I am exhausted and a cup of coffee sounded so delicious.
  So here I sit, trying to wake up.  All the other blogs that I keep a close eye on are not really posting so I thought to post for myself.
Now, let's see where to start...

  OH RIGHT!!  How was everyone's Christmas?  Mine was adventurous as I was house hopping, even to my own.  More on that later.  Did anyone get to have to some snow for your Christmas morning?  I would have loved that.  But having wonderful friends is just about as good as snow on Christmas morning.  Snow always puts the "icing on the cake" for me at Christmas time...did you get that reference?  Haa haa, sometimes I crack myself up.
  So now to more details on my Christmas...where should I start?  Since I am a picture person, let me look through my pictures...

I just got a refill on my coffee so I will wait for you to refill your cup with what you are drinking...ready?  OK then let's start.  This seems like a good place.  A tradition I have kept
 every Christmas I have spent in Oregon is going to a family friend's Christmas Eve celebrations.  The best part of the night is when we dance around the tree. 
This is something I first experienced in 2002 when I spent a Christmas in Norway.  That was an awesome winter vacation(with actual snow*winky face). 
Back to my Christmas Eve.  As I was driving home from my painting job that evening...the fog came in.  It was actually only about 4pm.

We always sit down and have a meal, then we make our way to the living room to play games.  Each year this family also invites some other people and they are always different.  This year we had a special friend with her husband and two sons.  Their other son is in Norway this year.
The game we played this year was Catch Phrase. 
After the game some people had to sit on the most competitive player because he was laying down instead of going around the tree with us.

Here is a quick peek at us going around the tree.

And the fun wasn't over yet.  We headed back to the dining room to fill ourselves with desserts and passed out a few gifts to each other.
Then at about midnight I made my way to another house until about 3am to an open house.  Usually there are much more people at this place but this year, it was a bit sparce.  Atleast one other girl was there with me and also the mom of the bachelor who lives there.  She is a great friend and "mom" to me.

  We ended up playing another game of catch phrase for about 2 hours.  However, there was someone there who's birthday it was so every hour on the hour, we had to sing to him.  And sometimes again when we were proud of him for something he did.  Sometimes we would do it when he re-entered a room but he did pretty good about staying in one spot.

 

Now onto Christmas Morning

 There is a family here that I consider to be my family.  And I refer to the children as my nieces and nephews.  I have never done Christmas morning with them and I decided this year was perfect.  When I arrived in the morning I see this.  There is even more hiding behind the tree.  The best gift of all was this girl got this huge bear.  You could never guess though because it was in a smallish box that was only half the size of the bear.  The more she unwrapped it, the bigger it got.

Then I headed over to couple's house to eat a real mexican lunch.  It was so yum.  

One of my favorite things about Holidays is that it leaves time to play games.  Here we are playing Skip-bo.  I hadn't played that in over 10 years.

I was there most the day until late afternoon.  I headed home to prepare for my own visitors.  I like traditions, as I have told you, and I don't have my own, so I thought to make one.  I invited friends over for a light meal and fellowship.  It was huge success and so much fun.  I think next year I might actually invite people to actually spend Christmas with and spend most of the day hosting for them.

Here is some coziness.

One of them even stayed to help clean up...She is the greatest.  We then stayed up til 2 talking and playing Heads Up...a wonderful game that is so much fun.

Well that was my Christmas.  The next two days were spent lounging around and being lazy.  I have been fighting a cold for a while now and still haven't been able to kick it.  It could be all the yummy goodness I have been snacking on. 

So now I look around all the things that need to be done before school starts in a week. There is a very long list...
I still have to finish some cards and send them out before the new year.  And it's just around the corner.  I guess I better go make a dent on them so send out tomorrow.