on the 4th day of christmas - we all crashed

gosh.... three days of parties and eating and family and gahhh.... we are finally taking a day to just do nothing. i'm catching up on blogging and photos chris did some work in the basement and took the car to have the allignment fixed (he just left to pick it up). then he's heading out to barne's & noble to do a little shopping with a gift card he just got. i'm planning on heading to the basement to tackle a mountain of laundry soon... but before that i thought i would write about our christmas (ooh and my birthday too) first.

dec. 24th, my 31st birthday. really, i am not very excited about this one. i'm not depressed about it or anything just not overly excited about it. we decided to have my family over for lunch. and we decided that chris would cook us filet. we had watched an alton brown episode a few months ago about purchasing and preparing an entire filet. so on our last trip to costco, we did just that. chris cleaned it and cut a few filets and a few small roasts from the large hunk of meat. he then prepared the filets like this. i made a salad of fresh spring greens, manderine orange slices, dried cranberries, pecans, blue cheese crumbles and a raspberry vinigarette. the salad and the filet were a perfect pairing for lunch. everyone enjoyed it except for max. it was little on the peppery side for him. so we rinsed his meat off in the sink and he ate a few more bites... i think crackers filled him up earlier.... anyways, then we had a yummy raspberry and cranberry "flan" from giant eagle. it was more like a vanilla pudding tort with raspberries and cranberries on top. it was very tasty and not too sweet. i then recieved a few really nice gifts. my parents gave me new stainless steal canisters for the kitchen to replace my yellow ones that needed to be replaced and some cash to get some new things after andrew arrives. jesse and heather gave me a really nice framed photo of max and me from earlier this year. and two ornements for the tree. and chris and max surprised me the most by giving me my very own Flip video camera. chris has one of his own but it's mainly used for work. this one is mine and will stay with me at the house during the day so that i can capture max and soon andrew too while daddy is at work. that was a huge surprise that i really was NOT expecting.

then everyone left. we all took naps and then at 5:30 we packed up max and all his crap and went to see my aunt, uncle and a few cousins for the evening. this was very nice and max started his round of opening gifts. this was the first time that he seemed to sorta "get it" in terms of opening gifts.... sorta.... they got him the fisher price airport, wow have times changed. when my brother and i had this toy over 25 years ago, it was just the tiny little airport gate with a huge oversized airplane. now this thing comes with runway, check-in gates a ramp, a bridge, a little plane, a taxi, and a helocopter and three Little People. max loves it! he's been playing with it since then on almost an hourly basis. around 10pm we had decide that we were sick of chasing max around their home so we packed him up and came home. after we put max to bed, we cleaned up, and purged some of his old toys. some went to the basement for storage and some went into a pile for the st. vincent depaul store. he hasn't even noticed that they are gone :) i also sorted some books out of rotation.

then santa came, we put his easel together and i wrote a little message on it to max from santa. then i sat down and cried. yep, i cried because santa had come. and now i'm getting teary again. it's funny because santa came last year but max was way too little to know so we didn't do anything too special about it. but this year it seemed like it was just so much more real and that it was the start of a really fun adventure for the next few years so i cried. chris laughed.

the next day we got up with max, i video taped him coming in to see what santa had brought. and to open his gifts from us. he was a little overwhelmed and seemed to just want to find that airport from the night before. but we got through it, then we packed him up again, and went to my parents for brunch. my brother and his fiance were there too. it was all very nice. max got a few more gifts, we all got some nice things too, we had some great food, then jesse and heather packed up and left to visit with her family in erie. then we just had a nice time relaxing and hanging out with my parents. it was quiet and peaceful and just the way the holiday should be.

then after max took a nap and before we had dinner, chris, my dad and max took a hike down to the park to play. max had a great time until he fell and got a small boo boo on his mouth. he only cried for a minute though then then all turned around and came back home where we put max down for another nap because he wanted one. and then we all sat down to dinner. it was actually kinda nice that max was napping through dinner. nice little relaxing meal.

i snapped this photo as the guys were headed out for their hike. this is max (duh) and my dad. note the matching hats. i mentioned in a previous post that i had knit a had for my dad for christmas but it turned out to be too small. so i made a few adaptations and the 2nd one turned out perfect. he loves it! it fits him well too! i also gave him a bottle of homemade lemoncello and he loved that too. we had some after dinner (i only had a little bit) and he really enjoyed it :)

oh photo:

jeez, this is going to turn out like one of annie's marathon blog posts.... it's soooo long so far and i'm not even through yesterday.... *wink*

then yesterday, dec 26th, we headed to visit with chris's family. there were 13 people there. some of them i had never met... dinner was very yummy. there were lots of germs to be contracted, and we all received some very nice gifts as well. we pulled names in his family too. this year my sil pulled my name and she got me a gift card to my LYS and two new knitting books. The Knitters Bible and Style Your Own Kids' Knits. both are great resources and i can't want to jump into a new project. i currently have NOTHING on my needles. and i think i trip to the yarn shop is in order asap. then since my birthday was the 24th my mil got me an oval casserole with a lid just like i asked for and two gift cards to joann's yay!

max got 13 new books overall so my sanity has been saved :) he loves them all. and so far doesn't miss the ones that we took out of rotation.

i'm glad that our holiday tour is over. our next social commitment isn't until new years day. and that makes me happy. although chris said to me that he's not sure if he can keep this relaxing thing up for 14 more days until he goes back to work.... i told him that he has earned it and he needs to enjoy it because that's why he works his tail off during the semester. this is really the first year that he's not had a ton of other work to do while he was on break from point park. so getting used to it is a challenge. i on the other hand love the free time and the naps :)