Christmas Day

On Christmas Eve, Justin and I woke up in Gulf Shores at his mom's house. We hung out for a little while that morning before heading to Mobile for lunch with Scott, Hilary, Meghan and Caitlin. We went back to their home for a little while, and after playing a racing game we gave Scott for Christmas, Justin, Rez, Adler and I headed back to Birmingham. Although Justin and I have no real deep-routed traditions as a couple, we have been blessed to sleep in our bed every Christmas Eve. :-)

We slept in on Christmas morning and made it to my Mom and Dad's for brunch at 11:00. First stop was the den to see if Santa had come.

He had!!!! I guess we were good after all!

I always look forward to spending time with my family on Christmas Day, and I'm so glad EVERYONE was able to be there this year! Mom and Dad prepared a great brunch of breakfast casserole, cheese grits, and biscuits. They also had yummy toffee bars on the table for snacks. They were sooooo good that they were worth mentioning in this blog. After brunch, we headed to the tree to exchange gifts. Here are a few pictures to capture some of the fun moments we shared.

Mom and Dad got matching iPods!

And so did Amanda and Matthew!

Justin got a big grill for our patio!

And I got 3 months with a Personal Trainer (although in this picture I'm holding up some cute pajamas that I also received). As official photographer, I ended up with very few photos of myself!

Justin and I gave Dad a nice hardshell suitcase for short travel.

And we gave mom 24 chargers for her dishes - 12 pewter ones and 12 gold ones.

The highlight of our morning was this gift to Mom from Matthew and Amanda. This is Clarence Claus.

Mom loved him so much she kissed him. I have a feeling Clarence Claus will appear in our family Christmases for many years to come! :-)

We stayed at Mom and Dad's for a lot of the afternoon, then headed back home. Our friends Dana and Daniel came over with their little boy Chase, and the guys played Wii golf (their current obsession), while Dana and I amused the kiddo.

Chase absolutely loves our dogs, and Adler was a good sport while Chase went for a "ride."

After our friends left, it was time for OUR Christmas. For the most part, we decided not to exchange gifts this year. We moved in September, so we just spent quite a bit of money making the house feel like our home.

Here is a picture of our mantle and tree in our living room. After so many "Christmases," there are only a few presents left under the tree. Sad!

I gave Justin a portable player for his Zune MP3 player, and he actually really liked it! I have a hard time surprising him with gifts that he really likes.

Justin gave me pink control covers for our Wii and Rainbow flip flops that I have really been wanting since the summer. He also loaded my stocking up with Christmas CDs. I LOVE Christmas music between the day after Thanksgiving and December 25th. Justin gets sick of listening to the classics on the radio day after day, so he thought this Christmas music might add a little diversity!

I included this picture so you can see the other side of the living room (Hannah), but also because it is so typical of our dog, Adler. Justin, Dad, and Matthew all received indoor remote controlled helicopters from Santa. After we opened presents, Justin was flying the helicopter around the living room, and Adler couldn't keep her eyes off of it. It was so funny watching her follow that thing around in the air, and then try to attack it when it crashed!

Around 6:30, we decided we were hungry again, and we had nothing at the house to eat. You would have thought we would have had plenty of leftovers seeing as we had feasted with the Leach/Henry family at our home just days before, but everyone had taken the leftover with them, and Justin had polished off our the leftover hashbrown casserole the night before. We decided that it might be fun to find an obscure restaurant, the only one open on Christmas, and have a new dining adventure. After driving around for a long while, and passing this restaurant up the first time we saw it open, we decided to head back for an experience I can call my first and LAST!

Please believe me when I tell you that this was THE ONLY RESTAURANT OPEN on Christmas Day. We passed what felt like hundreds of dark restaurants - sit down, fast food, semi-fast, etc. Even all the grocery stores and Wal-Mart were closed! Our alternative was cereal at home, and wings sounded good at the time. For those of you who haven't been there, the wings are pretty good, but the girls are definitely barely dressed. I felt a little uncomfortable, and I'm quite sure Justin did, too, but we enjoyed our meal, and headed to Blockbuster. We rented the new Christmas movie "Deck the Halls," and enjoyed the rest of our Christmas evening warm at home. I'm quite sure I will never forget the year we ate Christmas dinner at Hooters. ;-)