Christmas

A Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to everyone!

For Christmas I went to Oregon for a family reunion. All of Jay's siblings got together for the first time in a decade or so and we got to visit Manny, who's our grandma and Grandpa Serge, who Jay's named after.

Yes, we somehow missed bringing the camera, so none of these pictures are from then.

We had a really nice time. It was the first time I met a lot of the family and I enjoyed getting to know them better.

One highlight was going to Grandpa Serge's farm and taking a long walk to get a Christmas tree. It was a rather Charlie Brown-looking thing, but we loved it. The men cut it down and we hauled it home. I've actually never been in such a moist climate before. The forest was so pretty in that area with moss growing everywhere. Mom made us really nice crocheted hats which she passed out that day to keep us warm. They were technically Christmas gifts, but we didn't actually follow the not-peeking until Christmas in a few ways.

Don't tell the kids, but due to some extended family not being able to make it on actual Christmas, we celebrated day early; the whole nine yards. Dad made a Turkey, a ham, and lots of other delicious things. Too bad half the stove didn't work at the house we were renting. I made a blackberry pie from blackberries at Grandpa Serge's farm. It was so pretty in the oven... but then it's top crust shifted as I tried to get it out--I'm not used to aluminium pie tins which bend. Then half of it was pretty :) But Christmas was fun. We all got matching pajamas from Mom and Dad. Now a pajama set has never correctly fit me in all my life I can remember, so I was pretty happy to show that the neckline wasn't huge on me and that the pants were also the perfect length! And that's when the rest of the family complained that theirs were all much too long. Haha

Another thing we did was Uncle Cory, who works for Nike, got us into the plant's factory to get good deals on shoes, so Jay and I both have really nice shoes :) Mine are really pretty, even if they were out of purple in my size. I'll tell my students that I got to tour the Jerry Rice building and Cory says he met him and Rice is nice :)

Jay got me a few things for Christmas, including a fierce toy frog and an awesome purple watch. My mom (not Jay's mom) got me the dress in the picture.

I also took pictures of my Christmas decorations.

Oh, and the picture of Little Foot surrounded by things-- some of our grandparents sent $5 just for Little Foot, so we went to the dollar store and got him things. We also spent $10 each for ourselves... it actually was a very fun date at the dollar store, getting anything we wanted. And then we went to 5 Guys because Chili's was so crowded.