It’s funny how much delight frozen water brings to kids. I guess it’s also funny how much I loved snow as as kid and how much I dislike it as an adult. Next time it snows I’m going to go out and build an igloo with my kids.
We had our annual Christmas Eve dinner with Fran’s family. Per tradition there was amazing food and log shaped desserts (bûche de Noël). After dinner we had a nice Christmas program and sang holiday songs. If I didn’t have such chronic anthropophobia I’m pretty sure these kinds of parties would be awesome 🙂
This year we decided to open a few gifts on Christmas Eve. That was a tradition in my family (well… we opened all of them on Christmas Eve). I have proposed it numerous times but was always met with rejection (bordering on outrage) so I was really surprised that Fran wanted to do it year with no prompting on my part. We settled on opening presents from extended family members and it was quite fun.
We try to make Christmas low key but special. We start off with some croissants, hot chocolate and patience (the only thing I want for Christmas is to sleep in).
We take turns opening presents and then we spend the afternoon playing with them.
We go to my parent’s house for Christmas Day dinner. Prime rib roast and green bean casserole! After dinner we hung out for a bit and bask in the holiday glow (or what’s left of it).
After hearing how great it was over and over we decided to go see Frozen. The whole family doesn’t usually go out together for movies but Chloe is finally old enough that she mostly sits though movies now. All she needs is a giant bucket of popcorn.
On New Year’s Eve everyone was hard at work helping mom makes cookies and brownies for the party (from what I gathered Claire was the only one who was actually helpful).
Before the party we ate dinner with the Browns (and Browns). The only thing that could satisfy this hungry group was a Chinese buffet!
And then we partied like it was 2013. We had a few friends over, played a new game, ate ice cream (cookies and brownies too), took a trip down memory lane and enthusiastically ushered in 2014 at midnight. All in all a fun day!
And with a mighty “thud” the year was over. Cam congratulated himself on surviving 2013 and promised everyone that he would “accomplish miracles” in the coming year. He smirked as he said it knowing his only real goal was to read four book and exercise twice. The books were a good bet.