Merry, belated, Christmas!

Wow. Blogging sure has taken a back seat for the past month or so. I'll get to what we've been up to in the past month or so in another post. This year Christmas was held at our house for gatherings with my in-laws. We typically do Christmas Eve with Jeremy's dad and on Christmas morning we celebrate with Jeremy's mom. Those events were all held at our house and it was our turn to play host. I guess after 6 or so Christmases we were due to deck our own halls.

Here's our table set for 9. I'm pretty sure this is close to the biggest sit down dinner we've hosted but we had so much fun doing this together!
We made ham, mashed potatoes, home made rolls and gravy, green beans/asparagus and fruit salad. We kept it simple, which was key in lowering the stress. Another key component in de-sstressing for the holidays is to let someone else do the cleaning! I'm a bit of a control freak when it comes to how things are cleaned so I did all of the regular house cleaning but had someone do the carpets. Huge relief!

This Christmas was special in so many ways.

We had some fun...
(yes those are adult onsies and yes those are props that we brought and yes... we walked into the mall-- dressed like that. no fear)

We had some much needed and oh so wonderful
family timeThis is one of the most special pictures I have, to date. It's the first time my brother's family met my dad and his family. My niece and nephew met their Grandpa for the first time and were spoiled rotten to make up for lost time. It was so special to see such a quick bond between the three of them. A merry milestone.

Merry, belated, Christmas!