Ready, steady, go!

I hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. We did quite a bit of traveling and the days in between at work were busy, hence my lack of blogging. But, here I sit, enjoying my last day off and watching Letter to Juliet (via ClearPlay). Glad to be back with you and share all that has taken place!

The Sunday before Christmas- I like our outfits to match on Sundays :)

A good start to the Christmas holiday...

 The Tuesday before Christmas we celebrated with my family- you already heard about that :)

Then Christmas Eve eve, we headed off to the Tampa area to spend Christmas with John's side of the family. I have pitifully few pictures of it because we just don't seem to get motivated to take pics with our phones. 

But, I did snap a few shots from Christmas Eve. My SIL Hali and her hubby Jeff host a party each Christmas Eve for their friends and some family. There was SO much good food! Lasagna, Puerto Rican pork and rice, corn casserole, mashed potatoes, green beans, cocktail weenies and meatballs, brie, spinach dip (to die for)!, cookies, cupcakes, cake and bananas foster creme brulee! Oh my- it was so yummy! I did snap a few food shots:

Excuse the skull plate- the hostess' home (not SIL) has eclectic taste :)

The best creme brulee ever made by my fabulous BIL

Christmas morning was very enjoyable. We stayed at Hali's house so we woke up with SIL, BIL, NIL, MIL. stepFIL me and John. Hope you can figure all those abbreviations out. BIL Jeff took some pics that morning, but I have not seen them yet. I am sure they won't be great, since it's White tradition to do Christmas at 6am! But with 7 people Christmas took like an hour. Santa (John's dad) also visited during the night. We found a Christmas tree with dollar bills clipped to it, chocolate milk, cake and toys for Justen, my NIL. Right outside the front door!

I'm not really sure if you're supposed to list out all your gifts as an adult, but I'm going to list a few. I got several fabulous headbands, nail polishes, 2 more Kathy van Zeeland purses, a zebra velour Snuggie (that I love), several household items- kitchen towels, apron, electric can opener (no more worn-out hands), two board games (Ticket to Ride and Last Word) and many other great things. My gifts from my SIL Tiffany were in the fabulous damask re-usable grocery bags with yellow S's on them. Perfect to match our kitchen. Also, the apron and glove set are made to look like a French maid outfit. So cute!

From Jeff and Hali

From John

 After being up a few hours to open all the gifts, we got to nap a couple hours while my wonderful SIL made biscuits and gravy from scratch. They were so delicious! I want the recipe, but I'm not getting it on purpose :)

Then we napped again before getting ready to meet John's dad to caravan to late lunch at this fancy schmancy hotel in St. Petersburg Beach. I've never seen such a display of food! There was a giant room filled with like 10 or more tables of gourmet food. And then a separate room for desserts!

The Don CeSar Beach Resort

Waiting in the lobby

Foyer

Christmas afternoon

Where the rich spend Christmas

The whole building is pink outside!

A fairly warm, sunny, windy day

Some of John's dad's family

Stuffed to the gills with food

The rest of our trip was relaxed and included more game time, food and naps!

For New Year's eve we went to our good friends the Seymores. We mostly chatted and played a round of Apples to Apples. Here's a decent pic of us on our first married New Years!

Using my Christmas gifts for wacky nails!

Happy New Year all!