Christmas Vacation Part I

I've been on a little blogging hiatus for the past couple of weeks, but K and I have been up to quite a bit, so I'll just get right into it by sharing our awesome trip home for Christmas.  We flew home on the Wednesday night before Christmas, and after a two and a half hour delay we finally made it to good old Northern California.  We slept a few hours that night and then we were up and at 'em, going (seemingly) non-stop for three days straight.  We were kept super-busy, so this post may be a little long, but I'll reward you with plenty of pictures of the festivities.

Thursday was spent hanging out with family and friends.  This included an annual mud football game (K played, I watched), my parent's annual Crab Cioppino night, and our annual potluck with our friends from high school.  That's a lot of "annuals", but some things are just tradition.  Like the fact that my mom always makes me chicken nuggets when everyone else is eating Crab Cioppino (I'm not a big seafood fan).  This year I got Tyson's Fun Nuggets in various dinosaur shapes which I shared with my 4-year-old nephew.  We ate and watched "The Santa Clause" while all of the adults were in the dining room.  I'm hoping this becomes a tradition because I have to admit, I felt pretty special when he asked to share my BBQ sauce with me because he thought it was better than his ketchup.  I don't get to see that little guy too often, and when I do he's usually busy being an almost-5-year-old-boy which seems to require a lot of energy and general running around, so he's too busy to want to hang out with me.

Photo highlights from Thursday:

All the boys after the game.

Cooks in the kitchen before Cioppino.

My best friends, aka "The Tri-pod"

Friday was Christmas Eve and this is when my mother-in-law's family does their Christmas celebration.  In the early afternoon we headed down to Alameda where K's grandparents live.  The rest of the afternoon/evening was spent eating and playing games, with the occasional philosophical debate thrown in for fun.  K has some really amazing family and they have always made me feel incredibly welcome.  He doesn't have any siblings, but has always been very close to his cousins on both sides of his family, and I really enjoy getting to spend time with them.  We played some hilarious rounds of Apples to Apples and a very intense game of Scrabble in which K blew all of us out of the water (hint to Scrabble players: "remix" can get you a LOT of points).  This group really likes to hang out so we didn't open presents until 11:15pm, and then finally got home around 1:00am.  The best part of my day was when K's grandpa came up to me, gave me a hug, and asked if I felt comfortable with all of them.  I told him I felt absolutely welcome, and then he said "Good, because you are my granddaughter now and you belong here."  My heart melted.

Photo highlights from Friday:

K and two of his cousins.  They could be brothers.

Grandpa showing us his crazy harmonica skills.