Christmas #3 - A Hill Country Christmas

On Christmas Eve, we left Houston and headed west to Boerne to my parents house. The time spent in Boerne can be summarized in 3 words - family, food and fun! We arrived to a Christmas Even dinner of small plates, finger foods and dips - boiled shrimp and remoulade, a cheese plate including my dad's homeade herb cheese (my favorite!), summer sausage, cream cheese and bacon bites, 7 layer dip followed by all kinds of cookies and fudge including Grandma's famous chocolate chip cookies, Ian's family recipe for meringues and yummy pecan fingers! No pictures, but I'm sure you can imagine. I was very excited to get to see little Evan again - my little nephew is growing SO fast (pictures soon!). Most of the family was up well past midnight wrapping presents (ok, so we go a bit overboard with stockings).

We all awoke on Christmas morning to this beautiful and VERY happy Christmas tree:

Here we are opening our presents:

We had breakfast - Ian's yummy cinnamon rolls and breakfast casserole:

Finally, it was time for our last little present opener to open his very first Christmas presents. Evan had so many presents we decided it would be best for him to have his own present opening after he ate. Here's the (slightly spoiled) little cutie:

His Grandma even found the perfect shirt :)

Yet another delicious meal for Christmas dinner - very British - prime rib, salad, mashed potatoes, Yorkshire pudding, Christmas pudding for dessert and of course, Christmas crackers. Don't we all look lovely in our Christmas cracker hats!?

On Friday, we tool a walk around the neighborhood in the balmy weather (70 degrees!). Friday evening, the Davis family - John, Jennifer, Reid Candice and Papa and Marianne joined us for hamburgers. Even though they were tired from a long day of travel, we had a great visit - it was so nice to finally get to meet Candice! Here are a couple more of my favorite photos from our visit:

On our last night in Houston, we were lucky enough to be able to meet Jeff and his new girlfriend, Sarah for dinner at Lupe Tortillas (YUM!) and meet up with Scott and Cynthia afterwards for drinks at Beaver's Restaurant and Bar. Living so far away, we really miss all of our friends, so it was so great to be able to see them!

Christmas #2 - A Gulf Coast Christmas

Our Gulf Coast Christmas began on Monday afternoon when we arrived at Tommy's mom and Robert's house in Houston. Rather than give a day-by-day account like I did for our Louisiana Christmas, I thought I would give my 5 favorite things about our Gulf Coast Christmas. They are (in no particular order):

1. The Amazing Christmas Candy Race

Tommy's Mom is so creative - we can never just open presents when we're at her house. In between stockings and before we opened the presents under the tree, Brandi, Ryan, Tommy and I participated in The Amazing Christmas Candy Race. The competition began with a toothpick and marshmallow structure building contest - first team to top 12 inches wins. Tommy and I were a close second in this competition.

Next, the race really began. Each team headed to a different room to search for a box of candy wrapped in our color wrapping paper. Attached to the box was a clue for our next challenge. We all ran around the house like crazy people counting Santas, putting the verses of The Night Before Christmas in order, putting together puzzles, throwing paper balls into a container blindfolded and doing brain teasers - it was so much fun! I'm happy to say that Tommy and I were victorious this time - Brandi and Ryan got hung up trying to complete the fast forward (putting together a whole puzzle rather than just the border) :)



2. Christmas Lights!

Robert had researched and had a long list of fun Holiday things we could do around Houston. We chose to go see Christmas Lights - what better way to get in the spirit of the season? We drove to the Prestonwood neighborhood in Northwest Houston - a neighborhood famous for its over-the-top light displays. From the block that was all decorated for The Night Before Christmas - Texas Style to the house whose lights were timed to music playing on its own radio station, they definitely did not disappoint!

3. Pappasitos

Kathryn and Robert knew that we had been missing our Mexican food up in Connecticut, so they treated us to dinner at Pappasitos - Fajitas for everyone! Sorry I don't have any pictures of the night, but we had a great time and the food was delicious!

4. Pot Roast Cook-Off

The pot roast cook off began with Tommy trying to show his mom and Brandi how to make pot roast for 2, rather than the usual version made in the giant Magnalite pot. Tommy tried to turn it into a competition to see whos pot roast was better, but I think the tasters were just glad they got to eat roast twice! I'd take either version any day of the week - YUM!

5. Time Spent with Family

Ok, a little cheesy, I know. #5 encompasses everything else we did while we were in Houston - baking, watching movies, playing games, opening presents and just hanging out. We hadn't seen Tommy's family since we moved up North, so it was great to get to spend some time with everyone. We're hoping that they can all make visits up to Connecticut sometime in 2009!

Christmas #1 - A Cajun Christmas

This year, Tommy and I were lucky enough to be able to celebrate Christmas not once, not twice, but 3 times, each with a different part of our family. After flying in to Houston on December 18th, our Christmas festivities began with drive down I-10 to Lafayette, Louisiana to visit Tom and Greta and the Mhires for the weekend. We made a slight detour down 6-10 to the Kolache Shoppe - best kolaches in Houston! They don't even know what a kolache is in Connecticut :(

Unfortunately, the beautiful floors in Tom and Greta's house had been ruined by water for the second time, but fortunately, their neighbors were nice enough to let us all stay at their house while they weren't using it. Friday afternoon, we headed over to Tom and Greta's property to watch Tom and Buck herd cattle. Tom is really enjoying learning how to herd and competing with Buck, and it sounds like he has great potential to excel in herding competitions. It was fun to watch! On Friday night, Momom and Papop joined us for Greta's delicious crawfish etoufee, we worked on putting together a puzzle and had a nice relaxing night.

Saturday afternoon and evening was the family Christmas celebration - this time we celebrated at Tommy's aunt Liz's house. As always, the food was delicious - a traditional cajun Christmas meal - pork roast, fried turkey, rice, corn and gravy, rice dressing, Mamom's cheesy potatoes, green bean casserole and of course miracle pie for dessert! This year, we started a new tradition with the "Dirty Santa" gift exchange, where everyone brought a gift and drew a number. When it was your turn to a gift, you could either unwrap one, or steal (like a white elephant, but the presents are good!). It was a great way to exchange gifts with a large number of people (18!) - thanks, Brandi! We were sad we didn't get to see Tommy's cousins Lindsey, who was in Africa and Jake, who was in a fairly serious car accident the night before we arrived (not to worry - he's OK).

Papop looked so handsome in his hat from Brandi and Ryan!

Sunday was a relaxing day of puzzles, cards, and smores by the fire. Tommy's godfather, Wes and his wife Chris stopped by for a few minutes and I learned bouree, a Cajun card game. Greta and I completed a 1000 piece puzzle and observed a very competitive game of hearts - Tom was the big winner!

On Monday, we headed back to Houston to begin our second celebration...

Christmas in New York!

So even though the high was 34 degrees, Tommy and I decided yesterday to brave the cold to experience the craziness that is Christmas in New York City. The wind wasn't too bad, so with many layers, the weather didn't really feel that cold.

My friend Turner, who lives in NYC, created a list, especially for me, of "Top 10 Places to Shop in NYC" and also "Top 4 Cliches Worth Visiting." Great lists! We visited almost all of them. We started out at Grand Central and headed down Broadway to Macy's in Herald Square to see the windows and holiday decorations. Here are a couple of photos:

From there, we continued down to Soho and West Village and made a couple of purchases at the stores Turner recommended and took the subway back to the Upper East Side. There, we took a look at the windows at Bloomingdales - the Tony Bennett Christmas music was playing in the background, so it really felt like Christmas.

We stopped in a few other stores as we headed back towards 5th. Ave. We skipped FAO Schwartz because the line stretched around the building, but stopped to look in the windows at Bergdorf Goodman - definitely more "avant garde" than the others, but really cool.

Our last sight-seeing stop of the night was the one we had been waiting all day for - the tree and skating rink at Rockefeller Center. It was SO crowded, but totally worth it!


We stopped for dinner (burgers) at Eamonn's Bar & Grill, an Irish pub near Grand Central before heading home. I'm not sure if it was because we were both really hungry, but the burgers were great! We may not have gotten nearly enough Christmas presents bought, but we had a fabulous day!

Our Christmas Tree

We woke up this morning to a couple of inches of snow covering the grass, our cars and the driveway - the Christmas season has arrived! Strangely, our driveway was the only one covered in snow - it had all melted from the streets and other driveways - I'm still wondering how that happens.

Now that it's officially Christmas season here, I thought I should post photos of our lovely Christmas tree. I've always wanted to go to one of the Christmas tree farms where you cut down your own Christmas tree and it seemed like a very "Northeast" thing to do, so Tommy and I headed to the Christmas tree farm in Westport, about 20 minutes from our house.

We found our tree standing by itself, away from the other trees, just waiting for us. Tommy cut it down and the people at the Christmas tree farm helped secure it to the top of the car. I was nervous about getting it home - I still have memories of my mom with her hand out of our car window trying to be sure the tree stayed on top of the car!), but these people did a great job, and our tree didn't move an inch the whole way home!

The tree looked pretty small at the farm, but I was glad we chose not to get a bigger one - this one has about an inch of space between it and the ceiling! Tommy set the tree up and strung the lights, I hung the ornaments, and Max and Albert helped by drinking water out of the Christmas tree stand. I think the finished product turned out pretty nicely:

Stay tuned for the pictures of our Christmas shopping trip to NYC. We had a wonderful day - I only wish we had gotten more actual shopping done!