Christmas Wrap-Up

I'm happy to say that the first Christmas in four years that Sean and I have spent together in the States was fantastic. I had such a great time with my family and although certain things about spending Christmas in Europe is fun, like different traditions and Christmas markets, I am all about Christmas in the States. Plus, it's ten times easier for me to shop for gifts living here. The Saturday before Christmas was my Mom's side of the families get-together. I always look forward to this so much, because this side of the family is much bigger and the more the merrier is what I always say! Here are a few photos from that night.

 

One of my favorite parts of our gathering is the fact we now do Dirty Santa/White Elephant Gift exchange instead of drawing names. Last year I got this huge pair of panties, so I re-gifted it. My cousin got it and was a great sport about wearing them.

I got a Camo hat as my present, this was after I stole a gift and then got it stolen from me.

My Dad ALWAYS hangs out under the mistletoe. I don't think it's intentional, it's just where he always is. This year, we put my cousin up to surprising him with a kiss. It was hilarious!

Our next big night was Christmas Eve. My immediate family has a snack night and we watch Christmas movies while we snack. Christmas Vacation is always one of the movies, but we also watched Elf and some claymation Christmas movies as well. We also open up one present, which is always our Christmas Pj's. This year, I got Sean and I matching shirts.

Snack night goodies. Bacon wrapped water chestnuts, Lil Smokies, Spinach dip, Mozzarella dip, Jalapeno Popper dip, shrimp cocktails and all sorts of other goodies.

This year for gift tags for Sean, I addressed them to correspond to what was inside the gift. For example: This was a Pulp Fiction print, so I addressed it to Vincent Vega, From Mia Wallace.

On Christmas Day morning, my immediate family always opens gifts. Sean and I were quite spoiled by my parents and brother.  A few things I got were:

A new office chair, Hungry Girl cookbook, Hallmark ornaments, Clarisonic Mia, Poster Art of the Disney Parks book, 2 season of Sex and the City, sander, blender and food dehydrator.

At noon, we go over to my Dad's side of the family to eat lunch and open presents with them. Although I had a good time with that side of the family and got more awesome presents, my favorite part of the day is when I stumbled upon an old photo of a group of soldiers. When I asked my grandma about it, she mentioned it had been her aunt's second husband's unit in WWII. Then she said, "Oh, I have his uniform as well hanging in the closet."  Sean and I had our mouths open. I've never heard about an uncle of my grandma's being in WWII and the fact she had his uniform was even more amazing. Turns out, his daughter had tried to throw it away after he died, so my grandma rescued it from that fate. She ended up giving the uniform (and photo) to Sean and I and refused to take money for it.  So far, we've determined he was in the 357th Infantry, attached to the 90th Infantry, which was part of the Third Army, which Patton was head of.  From the info about the 90th Infantry, he should have been at Normandy, Battle of the Bulge, etc..there was only one service ribbon on the uniform and I know there had to have been more at some point. I'm sending off a request for info from the National Archives, so I'm hoping we'll get some good info from that. We plan on putting the uniform in a shadow box to preserve it and it will end up hanging in Sean's office with the rest of his military items.

Although the original forecast for Christmas, was for us to get a couple inches of snow, it never happened. However, once we got back to Lawton a few days after Christmas, we were greeted with leftover snow. 

How was your Christmas? I'd love to hear about what you got and what you did.